Introduction
p. 1-45
Texte intégral
1The Bibliotheca Malabarica is an annotated catalogue of Tamil texts collected by Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, a Protestant missionary in Tranquebar, between July 1706, when he arrived in India, and August 1708, when he sent the catalogue to Europe. The catalogue consists of 165 entries in four sections, covering Protestant, Catholic, “heathen,” and Muslim works respectively. The third section is by far the longest, containing 119 entries for works of Hindu or Jaina provenance. After compiling the catalogue, Ziegenbalg continued to collect and a survey of his other works and letters reveals that he mentions in total no fewer than 170 Hindu and Jaina texts. We can be reasonably confident that Ziegenbalg had access to about 130 of the works he mentions, although it is possible—even probable—that he had other works too. Ziegenbalg’s fame as a pioneering scholar of Tamil Hinduism is based almost entirely on his detailed study of these texts. Although he conversed, and corresponded, with many Hindus, and travelled to a limited extent within the Tamil region, it is above all his study of these “heathen” texts which sets him apart from his contemporaries among European writers on Hinduism.
2It is the third section of Ziegenbalg’s Bibliotheca Malabarica which has also been of most interest to other scholars. Kamil Zvelebil, the great Czech scholar of Tamil literature, describes this section of the work as “a relatively complete account of Tamil literature.”1 By contrast, Hans-Werner Gensichen, a leading historian of mission, characterised it as a jumble of “grammatical and mythological works, songs and stories, philosophy and pornography, astrology and theology.”2 The truth, perhaps, lies somewhere between the two. Ziegenbalg’s collection is not representative; he has few early works and was only minimally aware of the canonical works of the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava tradition, the Tirumuṟai and Nālāyira-Tivyappirapantam. The character of his collection was to some degree determined by happenstance—Ziegenbalg states that he acquired whatever books he could and certainly there were works he acquired without having read, so that he would have had to rely on others’accounts of their content. Nevertheless the collection is not entirely eclectic either. It was driven both by his own interests, and—as shall be argued here—by the nature of his connections with the Tamils who provided texts for him. If we are to evaluate Ziegenbalg’s understanding of Tamil Hinduism it is crucial to be able to identify and to understand the nature of his sources. One of the problems, exemplified by the contrasting assessments of Zvelebil and Gensichen, is that scholars of Tamil literature have for the most part been relatively uninterested in Ziegenbalg’s pioneering efforts, and historians of mission have lacked sufficient knowledge of Tamil literature to make an accurate assessment of them. It is our hope that, by collaborating, we have been able to overcome this problem—at least to some extent. We provide here a new translation into English of Ziegenbalg’s account of Tamil literature in the third section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, which is also the first to include all 119 entries. Following the translation of each entry, we identify the work, comment on Ziegenbalg’s characterisation of it, and provide details of published editions, translations, or manuscript holdings. In the final chapter, we collect also his comments on other texts he mentions in works written after 1708.
3In this introduction, we discuss Ziegenbalg’s study of Tamil and his acquisition of Tamil texts. We attempt also to determine the character of the library by considering—under the heads of the major genres of Tamil literature—both the works it contained and those which it might have been expected to contain but in fact did not. After considering the fate of Ziegenbalg’s library—and his catalogue of it—after his death, we assess the likely sources of his collection, and conclude by discussing the significance of his library for his account of Hinduism.
Ziegenbalg’s encounter with Tamil
4Ziegenbalg is renowned as the pioneer of Protestant mission in India. What has been obscured by the host of mostly hagiographical works which recount his life is how little prepared he was for that role. In August 1705 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 a year earlier by 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 and somewhat equivocal response had been taken as an acceptance.3 In early October, as he set out for Copenhagen—together with his fellow missionary, Heinrich Plütschau—to be ordained, he wrote to August Hermann Francke to say that they were now to be sent to another of the Danish overseas territories in Guinea, West Africa.4 By the time they embarked, on 29 November 1705, the destination had changed again, now finally to the “East Indies.”5 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.6 Ziegenbalg mentions only one European work on Indian religion which he had read in 1706, Philippus Baldaeus’s Beschreibung der ost-indischen Küsten Malabar und Coromandel… benebenst der Abgötterey der ost-indischen Heyden (1672).7
5It is, then, perhaps unsurprising that, on his arrival in India, Ziegenbalg fully expected to find barbarians. While underway to India he wrote that he was being sent to “the barbarous peoples”8 and 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.9 What is striking is how quickly his view changed, within months of his arrival in Tranquebar. Just over two months after his arrival, Ziegenbalg is already describing the Tamils as “a very intelligent and rational people,”10 who lead a “quiet, honorable, and virtuous life,”11 on the basis of their natural powers alone. The initial catalyst for the change in Ziegenbalg’s view of the Tamils seems to have been his conversations with them, carried out in Portuguese.12 While Ziegenbalg reports that many people sought the missionaries out for such discussions, a key figure in shaping his early impressions was an elderly schoolmaster. From early September he held his classes in the missionaries’house, Ziegenbalg and Plütschau sitting with the children and tracing Tamil letters in the sand. While the schoolmaster spoke only Tamil, Ziegenbalg nevertheless reports daily conversations with him from before the time he began learning Tamil.13 The impact was immediate: “I must confess, my seventy-year-old schoolmaster often poses such questions that I can clearly see that not everything in their philosophy can be so irrational as is fondly imagined of the heathen at home.”14 Ziegenbalg emphasizes, however, that it was his reading of Tamil literature which completed the transformation in his view of the Tamils:
When at last I was entirely able to read their own books, and became aware that the very same philosophical disciplines as are discussed by scholars in Europe are quite methodically taught among them, and also that they have a proper written law from which all theological matters must be derived and demonstrated; all this astonished me greatly, and I developed a very strong desire to be thoroughly instructed in their heathenism from their own writings. I therefore obtained for myself ever more books, one after the other, and spared neither effort nor expense until I have now—through diligent reading of their books and through constant debating with their Bramans or priests—reached the point where I have a sure knowledge of them, and am able to give an account.15
6Thus it was that Ziegenbalg, less than two months after his arrival in India, began to acquire Tamil books, at first by having the schoolmaster copy them out for him.16 Within two years he had assembled a collection of well over a hundred Tamil texts.
7The importance Ziegenbalg placed on his study of Tamil literature is clear from an account of his daily routine in a letter dated 8 August 1708. The letter was sent, with a copy of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, to Franz Julius Lütkens, the court preacher in Copenhagen, through whom Ziegenbalg had been recruited for the mission.17 From eight o’clock until noon, Ziegenbalg read works new to him, in the presence of “an old poet”—most likely the same schoolmaster—who commented on and explained them. A scribe noted phrases or words new to Ziegenbalg, and a further hour each day (from seven to eight in the morning) was devoted to rehearsing the lists of words and phrases thus collected. In the afternoon, from three until five, Ziegenbalg studied systematically the works of individual authors, going through each one thoroughly before moving on to another. Once the light had faded, from six thirty to eight, Ziegenbalg had read to him—“often a hundred times”—the works of authors whose style he sought to imitate in his own works. The remainder of the day was taken up with prayer, catechising, and rest. Although the routine was interrupted almost every day by discussions with Tamil visitors—many, according to Ziegenbalg, poets who came from a distance to meet him—the fruits of this intensive engagement with Tamil literature are clear. In the same month that he finished the Bibliotheca Malabarica, Ziegenbalg completed also his translation of Ulakanīti (bm 100), Koṉṟai vēntaṉ (bm 102), and Nīti veṇpā (bm 105), three short didactic works. Ziegenbalg had already begun to translate into Tamil as early as 1707, but in October 1708 he began what was for him the other primary reason for his intensive study of Tamil—his translation of the New Testament (hb 6: 226, 246). This work was interrupted in November when Ziegenbalg was imprisoned as the result of a dispute with the Danish Commandant of Tranquebar, Johann Siegmund Hassius.18 Although he was released after a little more than four months, Ziegenbalg’s relationship with the Commandant remained difficult, and the issue was only finally resolved with the appointment in 1716 of another Commandant, Christen Brun-Lundegaard.
8The first section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica includes a list of Ziegenbalg’s own early compositions in Tamil, including sermons, dialogues, and letters. These and other early works, intended for distribution among the Tamils, were copied onto palm leaves, and a number of them are preserved in that form in the Halle archives.19 Once the mission obtained a press, in 1712, they began printing tracts of this sort in larger numbers,20 followed by the New Testament in Tamil, printed in two parts in 1714 and 1715.
9Soon after completing, in early 1711, the first draft of his translation of the New Testament, Ziegenbalg began a “cursory” re-reading of his Tamil library, noting the elements of religious doctrine they contained and compiling them into a German treatise on “Malabarian heathenism.”21 In this book, Ziegenbalg mentions more than sixty Tamil works, and cites from a number of them at length.
10He cites most often from the Aṟupattuṇālu tiruviḷaiyāṭal purāṇam (bm 106) and Civavākkiyam (bm 51–53), the latter often together with Kapilar akaval (bm 97). He also quotes often from two works he ascribes to Kuru Namacivāyar— Ñāṉa veṇpā (bm 48) and Paramarakaciya mālai (bm 64)—and several times from the Viruttācala purāṇam and the Kanta purāṇam, neither of which is listed in the Bibliotheca Malabarica. Many of the quotations have to do with aspects of ritual.22 He also provides very substantial summaries of three narratives—the stories of the demoness Nīli (bm 35), and of the kings Hariścandra (bm 13) and Maṉu (bm 77)—and gives an almost full translation of the Tirikāla cakkaram, which is the subject of a long entry in the Bibliotheca Malabarica (bm 110). It was this latter work—together with the Puvaṉa cakkaram— which, it will be argued,23 provided the structure and central idea of Ziegenbalg’s second and final work on Tamil religion, the Genealogia der malabarischen Götter, which he wrote in 1713.
11While the Genealogia mentions—for the most part, briefly—the names of some eighty Tamil works,24 it draws also on a large number of letters written by Tamils in response to questions sent by Ziegenbalg. A little over forty percent of the text of the Genealogia consists of direct quotation from these letters. Ziegenbalg had been engaged in correspondence with a number of Tamils for several years, in part because of the political and practical restrictions on his ability to travel. Although travel along the coast was possible, and he made a number of journeys to the English and Dutch settlements at Nagapatnam, Madras, and Pulicat, an attempt to travel inland in September 1709 was aborted after only fifteen kilometres when he was informed that he would be liable to arrest and imprisonment if he travelled in Tanjore without the permission of the king, Shahji II. When he was able to travel, for example to Nagapatnam in July 1708, and to Madras in January 1710, he distributed copies of the letters and tracts in Tamil, and collected names of potential correspondents (hb 2: 93, 97; 6: 243). Although he records having sent a letter to the Brahmins of Nagapatnam,25 this correspondence seems first to have been taken up in earnest in August 1712, beginning with a letter to a group of Brahmins in Tiruvoṟṟiyūr, near Madras, who Ziegenbalg had found to be more learned than others.26 The following month he and his colleague Gründler reported having extracted and translated an account of Tanjore from twenty-six letters received from two Tamils they had sent there with instructions to report what they were able to observe.27 By November, this “Malabarian Correspondence” was going well, and the missionaries began to think of translating some of the letters and sending them to Europe.28 In January, fifty-eight letters dated between October and December 1712, had been translated and provided with explanatory notes, and were sent to Anton Wilhelm Böhme in London.29 Fifty-five of the letters were published as the seventh instalment of the Hallesche Berichte in 1714. A further forty-six letters were sent to Halle in August 1714, of which fortyfour were published as the eleventh instalment of the Hallesche Berichte in 1717. Selections from each collection were published in English translation in 1717 and 1719 respectively.30
12By 1714, the mission’s relations with the Danish authorities in Tranquebar had deteriorated to such an extent that Ziegenbalg decided to return to Europe in order to resolve the question of the mission’s privileges with the king and the directors of the Danish Company. While underway, he set down in Latin a grammar of Tamil, closely following a Tamil accidence, the Arte Tamulica, written by Balthasar da Costa SJ, and printed at Ambalakad around 1680, which he had been given by Hassius in 1707.31 The grammar was published in Halle in 1716.32
13Ziegenbalg returned to India in August 1716, bringing with him the woman he had married while in Europe, Maria Dorothea Saltzman. Although he continued to work on translation into Tamil—of the Old Testament and of works of Christian theology—his letters in the years leading up to his death are full of accounts of other work: preaching, printing, establishing schools, constructing a new church building, and defending the mission against its critics. Investigation of “heathenism” was delegated to a converted Tamil scholar, who was to draw up a lengthy book on the doctrines of the “heathen poets” which was to be kept in the mission rather than sent to Europe for publication.33 In 1718, Ziegenbalg prepared for publication transcripts of twenty dialogues with Hindus and Muslims, which were published after his death (hb 15, 16, 17). He died on 23 February 1719.
The Bibliotheca Malabarica
14The full title of Ziegenbalg’s catalogue reads “Bibliotheca Malabarica, consisting of various Malabarian Books, dealing I. with the pure Evangelical religion, II. with the impure Papist religion, III. with the Heathen religion of the Malabars, IV. with the Mahometan religion of the Moors, collected and in part written himself by Bartholomeo Ziegenbalg, missionary to the Malabarian heathen at Tranquebar on the Coromandel coast by appointment of His Royal Majesty of Denmark and Norway.”34 The first section has fourteen entries and covers his own writings in Tamil, including sermons, hymns, letters and dictionaries as well as translations of the catechism and other theological works.35
Catholic and Muslim works
15The second section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica has twenty-one entries and covers works produced by Catholic missionaries. Ziegenbalg first reports acquiring these books in a letter dated 22 September 1707, in which he notes that although the works are “full of dangerous errors” they nevertheless enabled him to develop “a proper Christian style” in which to express himself on spiritual matters “in a way that did not smack of heathenism.”36 He goes on to say that by reading these works—and in particular the translations from the Gospels—he was able, within eight months, “to read, write, and speak,” and to understand others, in Tamil. This would place his acquisition of the Catholic books in February 1707 at the latest, seven months after his arrival in Tranquebar in July 1706.37 In the Bibliotheca Malabarica itself, Ziegenbalg states that the library had belonged to a Jesuit “who went about among the heathen in the dress of a Brahmin.” During a time of “severe persecution” of Christians in Tanjore, 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.38 To the best of our knowledge, there is no specific reference to the loss of this library among the letters of the Jesuits of the Madurai and Carnatic missions but, as Neill notes for this period, they are “full of tales of persecution, often valiantly endured.”39 The most recent severe persecution in Tanjore had taken place in 1701, under Shahji II.40 It is possible that the library was made available to Ziegenbalg by Hassius, as we know that by 1707 he had also given him a Jesuit work on Tamil grammar in Portuguese.
16The catalogue concludes with a fourth section listing eleven Muslim works.41 The most important of these is the Āyira Macalā of Vaṇṇapparimaḷappulavar.42 Ziegenbalg comments on the high regard in which this work—the oldest extant Muslim work in Tamil—is held, but notes that he found it difficult to understand due to its Arabic vocabulary.
“Heathen” works
17Although a systematic identification of the Catholic and Muslim works in Ziegenbalg’s collection is to be desired, it is without doubt the third, and longest, section of the catalogue which is of most interest. In a later edition of the catalogue, prepared by Christoph Theodosius Walther, it was this section that was placed first, and it is also the section which has most often been copied.43 Its greatest significance, however, is that it allows us to identify the primary sources of Ziegenbalg’s works on Hinduism. One work of particular importance in this respect will be discussed below, but here we attempt to give a summary picture of the character of Ziegenbalg’s collection by considering the works he had—and did not have—in some of the important genres of Tamil literature. Works which Ziegenbalg mentions, but probably did not possess, are also mentioned here, as they are relevant to assessing the depth of his knowledge of Tamil literature.
Grammar, poetics, and lexicography
18Ziegenbalg had copies of both Tolkāppiyam (bm 1) and Naṉṉūl (bm 3), but found them “hard beyond all measure.” As noted, his initial knowledge of Tamil grammar came instead from the Jesuit Arte Tamulica. On poetics, he has Amitacākarar’s Yāpparuṅkala kārikai (bm 2) and another work (bm 20) which may be Taṇṭiyalaṅkāram, but not earlier works such as Iṟaiyaṉār’s Akapporuḷ or Aiyaṉār Itaṉār’s Puṟapporuḷveṇpāmālai. Nor did he have Nampi’s Akapporuḷ viḷakkam, although he did have a copy of the ilakkiyam illustrating its principles, the Tañcaivāṇaṉ kōvai (bm 61). Works on lexicography were an important aid to Ziegenbalg’s attempts to identify and make sense of the Hindu pantheon. Of the three earliest such works in Tamil that are extant, Ziegenbalg had the first, Tivākaram (bm 4), and last, Cūṭāmaṇi nikaṇṭu (bm 5). Walther’s catalogue includes two further lexicographic works, Akarāti nikaṇṭu and a copy of Amarakośa in Grantha script, but there is no evidence that either was in the mission library during Ziegenbalg’s lifetime.
Early didactic literature
19Ziegenbalg never mentions the caṅkam anthologies and the only older works in his collection—other than Tolkāppiyam—are didactic works from the eighteen minor classics, the Patiṉeṇkiḻ-k-kaṇakku. He had both the Tirukkuṟaḷ (bm 7) and a commentary on it which he ascribes to Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar (bm 8), although no such commentary is now known to be extant. It seems likely that he also had Ācārakōvai (bm 44), although in his entry on it he confuses the author with a sixteenth-or seventeenth-century commentator. It is possible that he also had Paḻamoḻi nāṉūṟu, or a later work of similar content (bm 16). Walther’s catalogue lists also Tirikaṭukam, although there is no evidence that Ziegenbalg himself knew this work.
Later didactic literature
20Ziegenbalg had a high regard for the morality of the Hindus, and showed considerable interest in later didactic literature in Tamil. In his entry on Mūturai (bm 104), he states that their morality exceeded even that of the virtuous pagans of European antiquity. Ziegenbalg had three other works which he ascribes to Auvaiyār, Nalvaḻi, Ātticūṭi, and Koṉṟai vēntaṉ (bm 101–3). The last of these he translated into German, together with two other similar works he also possessed: Ulakanīti (bm 100) and Nīti veṇpā (bm 105). Few of Ziegenbalg’s missionary successors in the eighteenth century shared his interest in collecting other genres of Tamil literature, but they did continue to show an interest in didactic literature. The very few non-Christian palm-leaf manuscripts remaining in the mission archive are almost all didactic texts, and the missionary Chistoph Samuel John (1746–1813, in India from 1771) translated a number of works ascribed to Auvaiyār.
Canonical works
21Perhaps the most surprising gap in Ziegenbalg’s collection, given his interest in religion, is the almost total lack of works from the Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava collections which form the acknowledged canon of Tamil religion. Although Ziegenbalg mentions the twelve Āḻvārs in the Genealogia (GMG 83r) as those who had propagated the religion of Viṣṇu, he never mentions the Tivyappirapantam and has no sense of its importance. He does have one work he ascribes to Tirumaṅkai Āḻvār (bm 66), but it appears that this is a work about the Āḻvār, rather than by him. Most of the Vaiṣṇava works in his collection are folk works on themes drawn from Vaiṣṇava mythology. In general, there is a pronounced emphasis on Śaiva works, both in Ziegenbalg’s collection and in his other comments on Tamil literature. Nevertheless, the only section of the Tirumuṟai, the Śaiva canon, which Ziegenbalg has is Tiruvācakam (bm 6). He notes that “this book is regarded as very holy,” and he quotes from it several times in his works on Hinduism, particularly the Malabarisches Heidenthum. Ziegenbalg was aware of Tēvāram, which heads the list given to him by the author of a letter in the Malabarische Correspondenz in response to a question about the books in widest use among the Tamils (hb 7: 374–76). A work entitled Tēvāram is also listed in the Bibliotheca Malabarica (bm 29), but Ziegenbalg’s very brief comment on it hardly suggests the importance of Tēvāram and may indicate that he had, at most, a short section of it. In the light of Ziegenbalg’s connections—discussed below—with the Śaiva maṭams at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram, it is perhaps notable that, according to Kay Koppedrayer, the scholastic tradition of these centres “paid little attention” to the works of the nayanmār,44 but their omission from Ziegenbalg’s collection remains remarkable. Ziegenbalg’s correspondent also mentions Periya purāṇam, which Ziegenbalg glosses as “the greatest of their eighteen history-books” (hb 7: 375). Although he knows folk versions of some of the stories of Śiva’s devotees, for example the Ciṟuttoṇṭar katai, it seems unlikely Ziegenbalg had a copy of Periya purāṇam itself. In the Malabarisches Heidenthum, he mentions a work called Tirumantiram (mh 136), but his description suggests a small work initiating disciples into the pañcākṣara (nama civāya) mantra rather than Tirumūlar’s lengthy treatise, the tenth book of the Tirumuṟai.
Translations from Sanskrit
22Ziegenbalg was aware of Sanskrit, which he usually refers to as “Kirentam or the Malabarian Latin” (e.g., bm 105), but he seems never to have considered it important to have access to works in Sanskrit. The chapter on Śiva in Ziegenbalg’s final work on Hinduism, the Genealogia, includes a list of the books about him which begins with a reference to the stories “collected in twenty-four [sic] books called āgamas,” and then adds the four “books of the law,” the six śāstras or “Systemata Theologica” (i.e., the ṣaḍdarśanas), and the eighteen purāṇas. The source of this is probably another answer in the letter from the Malabarische Correspondenz just mentioned, which in addition to Tēvāram also names the four Vedas.45 Here the missionary comments that while “the Brahmins make much of [the four Vedas]” they do not allow others even to see, much less to read, them. Instead the “idolatrous worship” of the Malabarians is established on the purāṇas, together with the āgamas and śāstras, which are found “in all sorts of languages” among the common, non-Brahmin, people.46 Of these, Ziegenbalg had access only to the purāṇas, which he identifies with the major Tamil purāṇas (gmg 51r–53v). But Ziegenbalg was aware that a number of the other works which he had were based on Sanskrit originals. Among these are everything from the tantric Cavuntariya lakari (bm 84) to the Pañcatantra (bm 30) and a manual on housebuilding (bm 49), as well as some purāṇas and of course the epics.
Epics and epic episodes
23Of the early Tamil “epics,” Ziegenbalg possessed only Cīvakacintāmaṇi (bm 9), and his comments suggest that it is unlikely that he read much of it. By contrast he was very familiar with the various Tamil versions of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. He had both Villiputtūr Āḻvār’s Pāratam (bm 10) and a commentary (bm 11) on it which he claims to have read “from beginning to end.” He also had several other Mahābhārata branch stories,47 including the Naḷa veṇpā of Pukaḻēnti (bm 86) and Naiṭatam (bm 60), which he attributes to Ativīrarāma Pāṇḍya but calls simply Naḷaṉ katai. In the Bibliotheca Malabarica, Ziegenbalg lists separately three chapters (bm 31, 42, 62) of the Yutta kāṇṭam of Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram, but despite the separate listing he attributes them all to Kampaṉ and was aware that the full work consisted of 12,000 stanzas. Ziegenbalg also attributes to Kampaṉ a folk version of an episode from the Uttara kāṇṭam entitled Kucalavaṉ katai (bm 65). He also had several folk ballads and narratives based on the epics or episodes within them. Among these are Ariccantiraṉ katai (bm 13), Pārata ammāṉai (bm 18), Aṉumār ammāṉai (bm 43), and Vaikuṇṭa ammāṉai (bm 117).
Purāṇas
24Ziegenbalg had several Tamil purāṇas and they were important sources for his own works on Hinduism. By far the most significant in this respect is Parañcōti’s Aṟupattuṇālu tiruviḷaiyāṭal purāṇam, which describes the sixty-four acts of Śiva in Madurai. Ziegenbalg had a copy of both the purāṇa (bm 106) and a commentary on it (bm 107) and states that he went through it very closely. In the Malabarisches Heidenthum he refers to no fewer than thirty of Śiva’s “sports” in Madurai, many of which he summarizes at some length.48 In 1708 he had a commentary on the Kanta purāṇam (bm 12), but noted that he had not yet been able to obtain a copy of the purāṇa itself. He seems later to have obtained one, for in the Malabarisches Heidenthum he quotes at length sections of the Kanta purāṇam dealing with the myths of Dakṣa/Takkaṉ and Cūrapatmaṉ, and in the Genealogia he refers at several places to other myths found in the purāṇa.49 Ziegenbalg also quotes several times from the Viruttācala purāṇam and the Piramōttara kāṇṭam, although neither is included in the Bibliotheca Malabarica. In both cases he refers only to the titles of sections of these works, and may not have realised they were parts of a larger whole. In his lists of Śaiva texts Ziegenbalg also mentions the titles of some purāṇic works (for example the Tiruveṇkāṭṭu purāṇam and the Kāci kāṇṭam) which are neither included in the Bibliotheca Malabarica nor cited in his other works. There must be some doubt as to whether he had actually read these works or whether his knowledge of them came only from his informants.
Caiva cittānta
25Of the fourteen Caiva cittānta cāttiraṅkaḷ, the only one Ziegenbalg may have had was the Neñcu viṭutūtu (BM 93) of Umāpati Civācāriyar. He did have some later Caiva cittānta works, notably the Tattuva viḷakkam (BM 59) of Campanta caraṇālayar (Kaṇṇuṭaiya Vaḷḷalār), but it is perhaps surprising that Ziegenbalg did not have more works of this kind. He describes Tattuva viḷakkam as very difficult, and states that books like it are no longer written.
Cittar works
26Ziegenbalg was greatly impressed by the writings of the cittars. When first reading them, he thought the authors might have been Christians (mh 42). Even when he realised they were not, he thought that their conception of the divine as formless and unitary, together with their contempt for caste and for temple ritualism, could provide a bridge for the introduction of Christian ideas of the divine. There is no standard list of cittars or their works,50 but among the works in Ziegenbalg’s collection which might be included in this category are Paṭṭiṉattār’s Uṭalkuṟṟu vaṇṇam (bm 57), Caranūl (bm 73), Taṉvantiri’s Uḷḷamuṭaiyāṉ (bm 75), and the works which Ziegenbalg names as Akaval and Uṭalkuṟṟu tattuvam (bm 98 and 99). Above all, however, Ziegenbalg was impressed by Civavākkiyam, which is quoted repeatedly in his works, especially the Malabarisches Heidenthum, and which he possessed in no fewer than three separate manuscript copies (bm 51, 52, 53).
Prabhanda and ciṟṟilakkiyam
27Tamil manuals of literary genres (pāṭṭiyal) produced from the twelfth century onward attempt to classify the literature which proliferated from about the eighth to the eighteenth centuries into genres which are usually labelled prabhanda (Tamil pirapantam, “composition”) or ciṟṟilakkiyam (“minor genre”). While the idea that there were ninety-six such genres was conventional from the sixteenth century, the actual number varied greatly and the total number of such genres identified may be twice as many,51 indicating that this is perhaps best thought of as a residual category. Genres are defined according to a wide range of criteria, relating to the form, length, and content of the works. The lack of consistency in definition and application of the criteria is such that Zvelebil, in his “Blueprint for a History of Tamil Literature,” identified this simply as “The problem of prabandhas.”52 The wealth of works produced in these genres, and the state of scholarship on them, means that we will restrict ourselves here to only those genres where Ziegenbalg has a number of relevant works, and make no attempt to comment on what works he did not have in these genres.
28The most productive of all the prabandhas is the piḷḷaitamiḻ, in which a deity or hero is addressed as a child; more than 250 works in this genre are known.53 Ziegenbalg had three piḷḷaitamiḻ poems, only one of which can be securely identified (bm 39). Another productive genre is ulā, in which some seventy works are known, the majority from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries.54 The title ulā refers to the procession of a deity or hero around a city and the intense, unrequited longing this arouses in women of seven different age-groups. Ziegenbalg has two later ulā works (bm 23, 37), another (bm 45) which appears now to be lost, and two (bm 27, 89) in the similar genre of maṭal.55
29The host of smaller devotional works in Ziegenbalg’s collection include many in genres defined on purely formal grounds. Among these are antāti,56 vaṇṇam,57 and catakam.58 Notable in Ziegenbalg’s collection in these genres are the Apirāmi antāti of Cuppiramaṇiya Aiyar (bm 25) and the Aruṇakiri antāti of Kukai Namacivāyar (bm 83); the Aṇṇāmalainātar vaṇṇam of Cēṟai Kavirāca Piḷḷai (bm 56) and an Uṭalkuṟṟu vaṇṇam (bm 57) which may be either the work of Aruṇakirinātar, or of the cittar Paṭṭiṉattār; and the Nārāyaṇa catakam of Maṇavāḷa (bm 85). Ziegenbalg also has a number of devotional works in the “supergenre”59 of works called mālai (“garland”). Notable here are Piḷḷaipperumāḷ Aiyaṅkār’s Tiruvēṅkaṭa mālai (bm 34), Kulacēkara Pāṇṭiyaṉ’s Ampikai mālai (bm 63), Kuru Namacivāyar’s Paramarakaciya mālai (bm 64), and a Citampara mālai (bm 33) which Ziegenbalg attributes to Kukai Namacivāya.
30There are also isolated examples of other prabandha genres in Ziegenbalg’s collection, notably Cayaṅkoṇṭār’s Kaliṅkattu paraṇi (bm 19), Aruṇakirinātar’s Kantaraṉupūti (bm 24), Piḷḷaipperumāḷ Aiyaṅkār’s Tiruvaraṅkakkalampakam (bm 28), Poyyāmoḻi pulavar’s Tañcaivāṇaṉ kōvai (bm 61), Kapilar’s Akaval (bm 97), and a Viṟali viṭutūtu “messenger” poem (bm 94).
Folk works
31Ziegenbalg’s library contains a large number of works in varied genres—ballads, dramas, prose narratives—which have in common that they are either folk works or they make use of metres, themes, and characters drawn from folk works. As many as one in five of the works in his collection would fit this description. Some of these works are—if they can be dated at all—very old, or at least have their origins in the earliest layers of Tamil (or other Indian) literature. Among these are versions of the stories of the demoness Nīli (bm 35), and of the kings Hariścandra, Nala, and Maṉu (bm 13, 60, 77).60 Indira Viswanathan Peterson argues, however, that the eighteenth century witnessed “a new interest [on the part of] elite poets and patrons in representing the ‘folk’” driven by the need of “strangers” such as the Maratha kings of Thanjavur “to negotiate anew their relationship with the ‘folk,’ i.e., tribes, lower castes, and marginal social groups… vital to the economic well-being of their kingdoms.”61 Ziegenbalg’s collection, made at the very outset of the century, mostly predates this development, but the prevalence of such works in his collection may reflect the trend identified by Peterson as well as the fact that such works were probably more easily accessible to Ziegenbalg. Thus in addition to older works of this kind such as Ñāṉappirakācar’s sixteenthcentury Tiyākarāca paḷḷu (bm 90) and a work ascribed by Ziegenbalg to Pukaḻēnti but probably of similar date named Alliyaracāṉi mālai (bm 119), we have a number of others which are hard to date, at least in the versions that Ziegenbalg had. These include “tales” (katai) such as the Ciṟuttoṇṭar katai (bm 87) and a work Ziegenbalg calls Tamiḻaṟivāḷ (bm 108); ammāṉai62 ballads such as those on Vaḷḷi (bm 36), Viṣṇu (bm 41), and Hanumān (bm 43); and terukkūttu works performed as ritual re-enactments of episodes from the epics such as Kiruṣṇaṉ tūtu (bm 70) and Arccuṉaṉ tavacu nilai (bm 114).
32Not only were the stories presented in these works often reported in Ziegenbalg’s works on Hinduism,63 but their use of direct, colloquial language almost certainly influenced Ziegenbalg’s language in his translation of the Bible into Tamil.64
Astrology and divination
33Finally, we should note the presence in Ziegenbalg’s collection of a relatively large number of works on astrology (e.g., bm 75, 81) and on various forms of divination, for example, from the calls of animals (bm 82), observation of the breath (bm 73), or physiognomy (bm 113). Ziegenbalg has little to say about these works, noting in the case of one such work (bm 113) that “I would not have taken the trouble to have read through it had it not been for the words and turns of speech it contains which were still unknown to me.” Shu Hikosaka and G. John Samuel estimate that some 20% of extant Tamil manuscripts are works of this kind,65 which likely accounts for their prevalence in Ziegenbalg’s collection. Ziegenbalg himself notes that there are many Tamil works on divination (mh 237).
The character of Ziegenbalg’s library
34Despite Zvelebil’s description of the Bibliotheca Malabarica as “a relatively complete account of Tamil literature,”66 Ziegenbalg’s library is by no means representative of Tamil literature as a whole. Most obviously he had very few of the oldest Tamil works and his collection has a relatively high proportion of folk narratives and ballads. Ziegenbalg’s location, restrictions on the accessibility of some types of texts, his method of collecting manuscripts and his own special interests all played a role in giving his collection its particular character. Thus it is clear that the relatively large number of texts dealing with ethics reflect his high estimate of Tamil ethical writing and his interest in using the ethical sense of the Tamils as a starting point for Christian apologetics. On the other hand, the fact that he has about the same number of texts dealing with astrology or divination of various sorts more likely reflects the predominance of these texts in Tamil manuscript culture than any particular interest in them on Ziegenbalg’s part.
35Despite the gaps in his collection, Ziegenbalg’s knowledge of Tamil literature is nevertheless vastly better than almost any of his contemporaries, especially if we include works—such as Periya purāṇam— whose importance he acknowledges but which he himself had not been able to acquire. His only rivals in this respect are the Jesuit missionaries, some of whom likely had a similarly wide knowledge of Tamil literature and often of Sanskrit literature as well.67 Ziegenbalg remains unique, however, in the extent to which we are able to document his use of Tamil literature, based not only on his catalogue but also the references to texts given in his writings on Hinduism. Where other writers might report “one of their books says,” Ziegenbalg not only typically gives the title of the book, but not infrequently also the chapter and verse. Even Jesuit authors rarely make explicit reference to particular texts.68
36Although on occasion Ziegenbalg enables us to fix a new, and secure, terminus ante quem for a particular text,69 for the most part he does not tell us anything about Tamil literature that we did not already know. While it does provide some insight into the kinds of texts that were in circulation in and around the colonial enclave of Tranquebar, ultimately his account of Tamil literature is of most use in enabling us to evaluate Ziegenbalg’s own works on Tamil Hinduism.
Ziegenbalg’s library after 1708
37The Bibliotheca Malabarica ends with Ziegenbalg expressing the hope that he would be able to buy or to copy many more Tamil works. It seems that he was in fact able to do so, for in a letter written the following year he notes that his library contains “300 Malabarian books.”70 This total probably includes Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim works, but nevertheless represents a near doubling in size of his library in a little more than a year since the despatch of the Bibliotheca Malabarica. No comprehensive listing of these later works by Ziegenbalg himself is extant, but an effort is made below to identify Hindu works not included in the Bibliotheca Malabarica but mentioned in Ziegenbalg’s later writings. Nineteen such works are identified here, although we cannot be sure that he owned copies of all of them—only eight are actually quoted in his own writings.71
38Ziegenbalg died in 1719 and his library did not long survive him. In 1726 the missionary Christian Friedrich Pressier reported that most of the manuscripts collected by Ziegenbalg had been stolen and sold. A schoolmaster recalled being present as a boy during the cold season when a box containing the books had been opened and the books used to light a fire.72 In 1731 Walther repeated this story and added that in the intervening five years worms had taken still further toll of the collection.73
39Thus Ziegenbalg’s library finds a place within a long history of the catastrophic loss of Tamil manuscripts,74 stretching back to the legends of the first two Tamil academies consumed by the sea, and including the loss of virtually all of the supposed 102,000 original Tēvāram hymns to white ants,75 the deliberate destruction of cittar manuscripts by Śaiva zealots,76 the reverent but thoughtless burning of manuscripts which so frustrated U. V. Swaminathaiyar,77 and the destruction by fire of the Jaffna Public Library in 1981.78 It is perhaps because of a pervasive and ongoing anxiety about the fate of Tamil manuscripts arising from this history of loss, that Ziegenbalg’s collection is often thought to have been sent back to Germany.79 It is therefore perhaps important to underline that although there is a collection of about a hundred Tamil palm-leaf manuscripts in Halle, most of these are Christian texts.80 Only eight of the manuscripts in Halle are works mentioned by Ziegenbalg in the third, “heathen,” section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica. Of these, six are didactic works, much favoured by both Ziegenbalg and later missionaries. They were copied in 1735, long after Ziegenbalg’s death, and are bound together with one of the other two works (Paramarakaciya mālai; bm 64). The other work is Cittiraputtiranayiṉār katai (bm 109). All of these works have been published—there is no treasure trove of lost Tamil literature in Halle.
40What the fate of Ziegenbalg’s library demonstrates, as much as anything, is the lack of interest in Tamil literature on the part of Ziegenbalg’s successors in the mission he founded. There are some exceptions to this general statement, but the catalogues they produced reveal the limits of their interest in Tamil literature. Benjamin Schultze, who arrived in Tranquebar in September 1719—seven months after Ziegenbalg’s death—drew up a catalogue of Tamil literature in the year after his return to Europe in 1743.81 It lists thirty-one Tamil works, only three or perhaps four of which are not among those in Ziegenbalg’s collection. Unlike the corporate effort of his Jesuit contemporaries and rivals, Ziegenbalg’s was a personal collection, undertaken at his own initiative, and without any intention of sending it to Europe. When he did send a Tamil palmleaf manuscript to Halle, it was not a Hindu text but an extract from the Gospels in Tamil, and it was sent not for the library but for the curiosity cabinet.82
Manuscripts of the Bibliotheca Malabarica
The Sloane manuscript
41Ziegenbalg’s catalogue of his library fared better than the library itself. There are three relatively complete manuscript copies still extant. The first, now in the British Library (Sloane 3014), was bought for Hans Sloane at auction in Copenhagen in 1726, from the library of Frederik Rostgaard, a collector. It consists only of the first 112 entries in the third section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, entitled “Verzeichnis der Malabarischen Bücher.” Rostgaard’s manuscript is likely to have been copied from the version of the Bibliotheca Malabarica sent by Ziegenbalg to Franz Julius Lütkens, the court preacher in Copenhagen.83 The manuscript was translated by Albertine Gaur,84 who appears not to have been aware of the manuscript in Halle, published by Wilhelm Germann in 1880.85 Gaur discusses and includes a partial transcription of Walther’s later catalogue of the mission library—which includes also extended versions of the other sections of Ziegenbalg’s catalogue—but the condition of the manuscript at the time prevented her from entering into a detailed discussion of its relation to the Sloane manuscript.86 Although Gaur “tried to follow the German original as closely as possible,” her translation is in places quite free, perhaps because she found Ziegenbalg’s German “cumbersome and at times rather vague.”87 Gaur provides modern transcriptions of Ziegenbalg’s phonetic transcription of Tamil titles, and comments occasionally on the accuracy of his attributions, but in general makes no systematic attempt at identifying the texts.88
The Halle manuscript
42The manuscript of the Bibliotheca Malabarica in Halle (AFSt/M 2 C 1) is a draft copy of the version sent to Lütkens which, although it bears the same date, may have been kept in Tranquebar slightly longer for it includes an additional seven entries in the third section and otherwise differs slightly from the Sloane manuscript.89 The text was published almost in its entirety in 1880 in a Halle missionary magazine, but without any attempt at identification of the works listed. This manuscript was also described in a brief article which appeared in an East German journal in 1959, when a new catalogue was made of the Halle archive. The author noted that “It is impossible to determine from Halle whether that part of Ziegenbalg’s reading which is unpublished, or not mentioned in the literature, still exists somewhere in the form of old palm-leaf books, or is known at all. In order to establish this, one would have to consult manuscript catalogues and archive holdings on the spot in India.”90
43In 1716, this manuscript was lent—together with a number of Ziegenbalg’s other major works—to Mathurin Veyssière de La Croze, the Librarian Royal at the Prussian court.91 La Croze, a former Benedictine who had converted to Protestantism in 1696, made substantial use of Ziegenbalg’s works on Hinduism in the account of “l’Idolâtrie des Indes” in his Histoire du christianisme des Indes, published in 1724. In an earlier short tract on the same subject, La Croze had been forced to rely predominantly on sources emanating from the Catholic missions, above all those of the Jesuits. Although La Croze protested in his preface that he had no hatred for the Jesuits, and that he was motivated to combat their “pernicious errors” only by his desire to defend the truth, the virulently anti-Jesuit tone of his work makes clear how much it pained him to have to rely on their reports as sources.92 He therefore seized upon Ziegenbalg as a reliable Protestant source, arguing that he was to be preferred to Catholic authors for the care with which he reported not only what he had seen, but also what he had read.93 La Croze translated the substance of several entries in the Bibliotheca Malabarica,94 as well as some of the extracts from Tamil works given by Ziegenbalg elsewhere in his writings including Aṟupattuṇālu tiruviḷaiyāṭal purāṇam (BM 106),95 Tirikāla cakkaram (bm 110),96 and Puvaṉa cakkaram (bm 111).97 La Croze’s work was a sensational success, widely reviewed, and quickly translated into German.98 In it, at least a part of Ziegenbalg’s account of Tamil literature was made available to European readers.99
The Copenhagen manuscript
44In 1731 Christoph Theodosius Walther compiled a new catalogue of Tamil works in the mission library. The manuscript, now in the Royal Library in Copenhagen (Ny. Kgl. Saml. 589C), restructures the catalogue, placing “the late Ziegenbalg’s recension of his Malabarian-heathen books” first. The sections listing “Moorish or Mohamedan books” and “Malabarian Roman books” follow. There are now thirteen Muslim works and twenty-nine Roman Catholic, but the greatest increase is in the fourth section, listing works produced by the Tranquebar missionaries themselves. Fifty-two such works on palm-leaves “some large, some small” are listed, all but one in Tamil.100 The final section lists fourteen works on paper, either in Tamil or “relating to Malabarian literature, religion, and philosophy.” This includes grammatical and lexicographic works, but also Ziegenbalg’s Genealogia der Malabarischen Götter, Gründler’s Medicus Malabaricus, and a translation into Tamil of Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ.
45Of most interest here is the first section, which has an additional thirty-three entries for “heathen” works. Some of these may have been works purchased by Ziegenbalg, others are explicitly said to have been acquired after his death. Although each of the additional thirty-three catalogue entries seems to refer to a different manuscript, it is not clear that each entry represents a distinct work. Thus, for example, Walther himself notes that a work he calls “Uppillācumaṟaṉ katai or Vīramāṟaṉ katai belongs as one piece with the book Tamiḻaṟivāḷ katai,”101 and he also lists separately the piramāttira paṭalam which is from the Yutta kāṇṭam of Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram, other sections of which appear in the catalogue.102 A further eight entries represent copies of works listed in the Bibliotheca Malabarica, but not included in the list of the twenty-six works which Walther lists as those remaining from Ziegenbalg’s library. They are, then, most likely manuscripts purchased after Ziegenbalg’s death, although not explicitly identified as such.
46In any case, the additional works listed by Walther do not by any means represent the whole of Ziegenbalg’s purchases during the years he was in India after 1708, but rather only those works that were still in the mission library in 1731. Walther states that many of the works purchased by Ziegenbalg, including many of those described in the 1708 catalogue, had been lost, destroyed, or damaged.103
The Mackenzie Collection manuscript
47Finally there is a fourth, partial, version of the third section of Ziegenbalg’s catalogue, in the Mackenzie Collection.104 This is an English translation of the first forty-three entries. It is dated September 1802 and is entitled “An Account of some of the most esteemed Works in the Malabar or Tamul Language copied from a Paper communicated by Mr. Cockburne.” A few entries are abbreviated, and there are some annotations, including one which indicates the translator knew the list had been prepared by Ziegenbalg, but it is otherwise a straightforward translation. The probable source, and perhaps translator, of this version is Thomas Cockburn, who had been Commissary-General to Cornwallis during the Third Mysore War and was later a member of the Board of Revenue. In September 1802 he left Madras for Calcutta and from there went on to Britain in December. In 1812 he mentioned the “Danish missionaries” when giving evidence to a select committee of the House of Commons on the renewal of the East India Company’s charter, speaking against the idea that the Company had a duty to propagate Christianity in India.105 A scholarly interest in India is perhaps indicated by the appearance of his name in the list of members in the first issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1834. He is thus likely both to have known Mackenzie and to have been disposing of papers in September 1802, on the eve of his return to Britain. What is not clear is how he came by Ziegenbalg’s catalogue, or why he had only the first part of it. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century the missionary Christian Samuel John had collected Tamil works to augment the remnants of Ziegenbalg’s library still in the mission’s possession, and may perhaps have had a copy of the Bibliotheca Malabarica.106 John, an honorary member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,107 and a fellow missionary with similar scholarly interests, Johann Peter Rottler, were in direct contact with Mackenzie,108 but to the best of our knowledge there is no evidence that they were in contact with Cockburn.109
Ziegenbalg’s collection
48One of the standard tropes of early European writing about Indian literature is the idea that the Brahmins were unwilling to allow access to the Vedas or to teach Sanskrit. As early as 1651, the Dutch chaplain Abraham Roger reported that only Brahmins were entitled to read the Veda,110 adding that it was written in Sanskrit like all the “hidden things” (verborghentheden) of their heathenism. As late as 1776, Nathaniel Halhed complained that the pandits were “to a man resolute in rejecting all his solicitations for instruction” in Sanskrit and that the “persuasion and influence of the Governor-General [Hastings] were in vain exerted to the same purpose.”111 Jawaharlal Nehru, in his Discovery of India, made much of William Jones’s supposed difficulties in finding a Sanskrit teacher.112 Nevertheless Europeans had in fact begun learning Sanskrit much earlier, as early as the late sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, the Jesuit Roberto de Nobili had mastered Sanskrit and even Roger was able to include translations from the Sanskrit works of Bhartṛhari, albeit only at one remove, from the Portuguese version prepared by his Brahmin informant.
49Although a handful of Europeans had acquired manuscripts of Indian religious literature during the seventeenth century, and some even published versions of these texts in European languages, acquisition of manuscripts on a large scale did not begin until the eighteenth century. The first systematic, state-sponsored programme of this sort was undertaken in the 1720s by French Jesuits in the Carnatic mission at the behest of the royal librarian in Paris.113 At his own initiative, Ziegenbalg had begun having copies made of Tamil texts some two decades earlier, and within two months of his arrival in India. At the time he could barely have been able to communicate in Tamil, much less to read literary works. He was nevertheless convinced that the “secrets,” or “arcana of the Tamils’ theology and philosophy,” were contained within them, and therefore had them copied “at great expense” at a time when his letters are full of appeals to Christians in Europe for financial support.114
50A key target for Jesuits’ collections on behalf of the French royal library was acquisition of the Vedas, which was achieved—at least partially and after much difficulty—in the early 1730s.115 While Ziegenbalg shows little interest in either Sanskrit or the Vedas, like Roger he does suggest that the doctrines of the Hindus are somehow secret or hidden. Although at this early stage he does not seem to have had difficulty obtaining texts to copy, he attributes this to his personal relationship with those who provided him with texts: “If they did not have such a great regard for me and also feel my genuine love for them in return, they would not let me have these at all, even if I were to give them a gold piece for every page.”116 Sascha Ebeling notes that in the pre-modern period Tamil manuscripts were
a deeply personal medium unlike the “publicly” circulating book, which was a saleable commodity. Since for centuries the ultimate goal of scholarly activity was to know a text by heart and be able to explicate and elaborate on every aspect of it, a manuscript served mainly as an aide-mémoire, or as a kind of textbook for teaching young pulavar apprentices. Of course, manuscripts were copied and re-copied, and teachers often dictated texts to students so that several copies could be made simultaneously, but these copies then belonged to the individual student or teacher, and they would not generally be lent to anyone.117
51Ebeling goes on to note that there were few manuscript libraries, and that only a few elite scholars would have had access to those which did exist, such as at the Śaiva maṭams (Sanskrit: maṭha) at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram. The Tarumapuram maṭam is quite close to Tranquebar, now about thirty kilometres by road, and the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai is another twenty kilometres to the southwest. Although Ziegenbalg never explicitly mentions either maṭam, there is reason to believe that at least a part of his manuscript collection was derived from the libraries at the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram maṭams.
The sources of Ziegenbalg’s collection
52At first Ziegenbalg obtained books from those who instructed him and his colleague in Tamil, among them the elderly schoolmaster who, according to Ziegenbalg, was able to recite the whole of Tirukkuṟaḷ and “many other difficult books accurately from memory.”118 Ziegenbalg first mentions having this schoolmaster copy out books for him in a letter dated 2 September 1706. Like most of the very earliest of Ziegenbalg’s known letters, the manuscript of this letter is not extant,119 but a number of printed editions exist. Most often cited is an abbreviated version, published in the 1708 in the second edition of Ziegenbalg’s early letters edited by Joachim Lange under the title Merckwürdige Nachricht.120 An English translation of this version by Anton Wilhelm Böhme was published in the following year, under the title Propagation of the Gospel in the East. A much fuller version of the letter had already appeared in German in 1708 in a kind of unofficial third edition of the Merckwürdige Nachricht, edited by Christian Gustav Bergen.121 The letter is roughly twice as long in Bergen’s edition which, together with other material included in Bergen’s edition but not available elsewhere, suggests he had access to the letters in manuscript. The letter includes an account of Brahmā’s revelation of four books, one of which was lost along with one of Brahmā’s heads when he contested Śiva’s supremacy. In the version edited by Lange, we read that while Ziegenbalg asked the schoolmaster to transcribe the remaining three of these for him: “he could not bring himself to do it, for it would be against their law to allow a Christian to have access to them.”122 In Bergen’s version, however, we read that the three books are being written out in Tamil for Ziegenbalg. Ziegenbalg states only that this had never before been done for any Christian, adding that they would not have done it for him either, had it not been for his familiarity and friendship with them.123 The account of their revelation by Brahmā suggests that the four books in question—one being lost—are the four Vedas, but this is very probably a detail taken from Baldaeus,124 on whom Ziegenbalg later admits to having relied in this letter (mh 14). Ziegenbalg’s description of the content of the books125 suggests that the schoolmaster had identified some Tamil works which he regarded as in some sense equivalent to the Veda.126 While it is impossible to identify these three books with any particular works in Ziegenbalg’s later collection, we can identify with some confidence other works which he would have obtained from the schoolmaster.
53Ziegenbalg’s collection of Tamil texts probably began with those which formed the core of the curriculum of Tamil village schools, the so-called tiṇṇai or pyal schools named for the verandah on which lessons took place.127 According to one nineteenth-century account,128 these would have included works on ethics and collections of proverbs,129 devotional works,130 and Tirukkuṟaḷ in addition to poetical vocabularies131 and “local purāṇas.” To these another nineteenth-century account adds Naṉṉūl, Tamil versions of the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa,132 the Pañcatantra, and a collection of folk narratives (katai).133 Virtually the whole of the tiṇṇai curriculum—at least as it is reported in these two nineteenth-century accounts—is represented in Ziegenbalg’s library.
54Ziegenbalg maintained six Tamil scribes in his household134 and would thus have been able to acquire copies of all of these works in the traditional manner described by Ebeling, that is, by having the schoolmaster dictate them to the scribes. The schoolmaster may also have provided other texts, and Ziegenbalg directly ascribes one book, a work on the human body (bm 98), to him. There were limits to this method, however. The schoolmaster had a copy of Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram, but it was too large to be copied135 and he was unwilling to sell his copy to Ziegenbalg. In the letter that accompanied his catalogue when he sent it to Europe, Ziegenbalg also notes that having books copied was expensive, and that he therefore sent his scribes “many days’journey” into the hinterland of Tranquebar where they were able to buy books cheaply from the widowed wives of Brahmins.136
55Ziegenbalg also mentions that the schoolmaster’s son, whom he names as Kaṇapati Vāttiyār, “obtained very many books for me.”137 Vāttiyār, the Tamil form of the Sanskrit upādhyāya, refers to a teacher and scholar and Ziegenbalg states that Kaṇapati exceeded his father’s scholarship (hb 6: 263). Kaṇapati is much discussed in the mission archives because of the storm created by his conversion in 1709, which almost certainly brought Ziegenbalg’s relationship with his father to an end (hb 6: 264–65). Ziegenbalg describes at length the attempts made by his parents and friends to dissuade Kaṇapati from conversion, at first with pleas and promises and finally “with violence.”
56Ziegenbalg had already noted the previous year that once they knew he was using their books against them, the Tamils became reluctant to provide him with copies of them.138 It is nevertheless perhaps significant that in a letter written at the height of the storm over Kaṇapati’s conversion, just a few days prior to his long-awaited baptism, Ziegenbalg again notes the difficulty of obtaining Tamil books.139 For it is possible that Kaṇapati’s father was not the only member of his family who helped Ziegenbalg to obtain books.
57One of those who tried to prevent Kaṇapati’s conversion was his father-inlaw, a maṇiyakkāraṉ.140 We can perhaps identify him with a maṇiyakkāraṉ called Kaḷiyapiḷḷai whom Ziegenbalg describes variously as as “revenue officer” (Zöllner) and headman among the Tamils.141 Kaḷiyapiḷḷai is also said by Ziegenbalg to have provided him with “various of his books,” including one which Ziegenbalg ascribes to Kaḷiyapiḷḷai’s father (bm 91). This is a varukka kōvai on Nākappaṭṭiṉam,142 and is one of several works in Ziegenbalg’s collection relating to Nākappaṭṭiṉam.143 While we cannot be sure that the maṇiyakkāraṉ called Kaḷiyapiḷḷai is the same maṇiyakkāraṉ who was Kaṇapati’s father-in-law, Kaṇapati may well have had familial connections with Nākappaṭṭiṉam. Some time after 1717, Kaṇapati converted to Catholicism and by 1727, when two Tranquebar missionaries met him, he had reverted to Śaiva practice and was living in Nākappaṭṭiṉam (hb 29: 496).
58Whether we have here one maṇiyakkāraṉ or two, the fact that some of Ziegenbalg’s books were supplied by a maṇiyakkāraṉ points to an intriguing possible connection with the manuscript culture of the maṭams at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram. The term maṇiyakkāraṉ can, as Ziegenbalg notes, refer to a village headman, one who has mānya, or tax-free, rights in land, but the term is also used by the Śaiva maṭams to refer to those who collect rent on their behalf.144 It is at least possible, that this was the position of Kaḷiyapiḷḷai and/or Kaṇapati’s fatherin-law. Despite their importance for Tamil literary culture in the late medieval145 and modern periods,146 there are relatively few studies of these maṭams.147
Maṭams, paṇṭārams, and Ziegenbalg’s library
59Although the institutional form of the maṭam is referred to in inscriptions from the Tamil region from as early as the ninth century,148 the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram maṭams were established only in the sixteenth century.149 Kay Koppedrayer distinguishes these institutions—together with the Tiruppaṉantāḷ maṭam, an eighteenth-century subsidiary of the Tarumapuram maṭam— from others designated with the same term,150 and argues that the usual gloss of maṭam in English as “monastery” or “seminary” is unhelpful in understanding their character and their role in Tamil society, preferring instead the more neutral “centre” or “institution.”151 She argues that they are best characterised as institutions housing lineages. The maṭams’ conception of themselves as lineages, descending ultimately from Śiva himself on Mount Kailasa is, as will be seen below, important in establishing a link between the maṭams and one Tamil text which was of formative importance for Ziegenbalg’s understanding of Hinduism.
60Crucially, Koppedrayer also clarifies the term “paṇṭāram,” which is much used in Ziegenbalg’s own writings as well as in later mission reports and histories of the Tranquebar mission.152 In the secondary literature this term is usually glossed “non-brahmin Śaiva priest.”153 Koppedrayer notes that in Cōḻa and other inscriptions the term refers to a temple’s treasury and, by extension, to officials concerned with the financial affairs of the temple or the management of temple endowments. As these inscriptions also imply these temple agents were ascetics, or “members of spiritual lineages,” Koppedrayer suggests that the term “paṇṭāram” came to be used for members of lineages of the sort institutionalised in the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram maṭams.154 She notes, however, that although the term is used in relation to the maṭams in later inscriptions, court records, and newspaper articles, the term is not used in the maṭams’own literature, or by employees or supporters of the maṭams. It is, then, an outsider’s term for the members of the maṭam lineages. She suggests two reasons for this: first, that the term retains, in the eyes of the members of the lineage, a suggestion of a primarily administrative rather than religious role. Second, she notes that the same term is also used to refer to “members of a low-caste grouping who are traditionally involved in the maintenance of goddess shrines [who] sometimes officiate as low-caste priests, serving an even lower caste clientele,” with whom members of the maṭam lineages would not want to be associated.155 The two senses of the term—lineage member and low-caste priest—are often conflated in the historiography of the Tranquebar mission,156 obscuring what is probably the primary referent of the term in Ziegenbalg’s writing.157
61At a number of points Ziegenbalg refers to “the paṇṭārams” in terms which suggest he thought of them as the keepers of Tamil literature. Thus he notes that a commentary on the Aṟupattuṇālu tiruviḷaiyāṭal purāṇam “is found only among the Brahmins and Paṇṭārams.”158 In December 1707, Ziegenbalg records his attempt to obtain manuscripts from a “prominent” Hindu and Muslim who were visiting him. When assured by his visitors that he would form a much better opinion of the Hindus and Muslims if he had read through their books, Ziegenbalg immediately called for one of his scribes and had him write out a list of “a considerable number of [Tamil] books” and lay it before them. While admitting that they themselves possessed only very few of the listed books, his visitors promised to help him secure them from their “paṇṭārams, brahmans and schoolteachers.” They added, however, that in order to understand the books he had listed, it would be necessary to wake their authors from the dead.159
62Ziegenbalg had a number of works directly connected with the maṭams. These include two works which he ascribes to “Ñānappirakācar Paṇṭāram,”160 the preceptor of Ñāṉacampantar, founder of the Tarumapuram maṭam. Another work in Ziegenbalg’s collection, Puḷḷirukkuvēḷūr muttukkumāracāmi piḷḷaittamiḻ (bm 39) on Murukaṉ at Vaitīcuvaraṉkōyil, ascribed by Ziegenbalg to “Kumarakuruparar Paṇṭāram,” is a known work of Kumarakuruparar, who was a disciple of the fourth head of the Tarumapuram maṭam, Mācilāmaṇi Tēcikar.161 The Vaitīcuvaraṉkōyil temple was managed by the Tarumapuram maṭam.162 Ziegenbalg has a work of the Neñcu viṭutūtu or “messenger poem” genre which he ascribes to “a Paṇṭāram whose name I have not been able to find out” (BM 93). The best-known example of this genre is of course Umāpati Civācāriyar’s early fourteenth-century work but, given that Ziegenbalg has none of the other fourteen Caiva cittānta cāttiraṅkaḷ, it seems more likely that this is a later work in the messenger poem genre by an author associated with one of the maṭams.
63There are a number of other works in Ziegenbalg’s collection which have more indirect links to the maṭams.163 He had a number of temple purāṇas and, as Shulman notes, most of the temple purāṇas written from the sixteenth century “were composed by scholars associated with these institutions.”164 More broadly, the maṭams were important repositories of Tamil religious literature going well beyond their own sectarian affiliation with Śaiva orthodoxy.165 While we cannot be sure which of the other works in his collection were obtained from the maṭams, perhaps through his links with them through Kaṇapati and Kaḷiyapiḷḷai, many of the works in his collection are likely also to have been found in the maṭam libraries.166
The Tirikāla cakkaram and the Genealogia der malabarischen Götter
64There is one work in particular, of fundamental importance to Ziegenbalg’s account of Hinduism, which is closely linked to the traditions of the Śaiva maṭams and may well have been obtained by Ziegenbalg through his links with them. In the Bibliotheca Malabarica (bm 110), Ziegenbalg names this work as Tirikāla cakkaram and describes it as “a mathematical description of the seven underworlds and the seven worlds above, together with the fourteen seas which lie between the fourteen worlds. Likewise an account of their paradise, or Kailācam, which is the seat of Īcuvarī with many hundreds of thousands of idols.” He adds the remarkable claim that it is “virtually the basis of all other Malabarian books, since everything is based on the principles contained in it.” While the Tirikāla cakkaram is, to the best of our knowledge, unknown to the scholarship on Tamil literature167 and is hardly the basis of all other Tamil books, it was formative in Ziegenbalg’s understanding of the Hindu pantheon, both in convincing him that Hindu theology—at its best—is essentially monotheistic, and in helping him structure his own account of the Hindu pantheon in his final work on Hinduism, the Genealogia der malabarischen Götter. As Ziegenbalg writes in the Bibliotheca Malabarica, the Tirikāla cakkaram shows “the genealogy of the gods… namely how all the other gods derive from the being of all beings, or the supreme God, and what their offices are, where their residence is, how long they live, how often each is incarnated, etc.” He adds:
I had intended to translate [the Tirikāla cakkaram], but nonetheless I found myself wondering whether this was altogether advisable, since many pointless speculations would be caused thereby, and keep [scholars in Europe] away from the things that are necessary. However, I leave it still to be determined, whether I might translate it into German or not, since I am now for this reason not really of one mind on it myself.
65The importance of the Tirikāla cakkaram for Ziegenbalg’s conception of Hinduism has not been fully appreciated, in part because of the difficulty in identifying the text. The Tirikāla cakkaram is not an independent text, but a section of a work which appears under a separate heading as the next work in Ziegenbalg’s catalogue, the Puvaṉa cakkaram.168 In fact Ziegenbalg did provide an almost complete translation of the Tirikāla cakkaram in the second chapter of the second part of his Malabarisches Heidenthum, entitled “Of their calculation of years,” which Ziegenbalg attributes to “Dírigálasákkarum from p. 1 to p. 10.” (mh 189). Earlier in the Malabarisches Heidenthum he quotes what he takes to be an account of the creation, and attributes this to “Dirugálasakkarum… vs. 11 seqq.” (mh 64–65). This passage, which is in fact—at least in the manuscript we consulted—the opening of the Puvaṉa cakkaram, points to the real significance of the Tirikāla cakkaram and Puvaṉa cakkaram for Ziegenbalg’s account of Hinduism.
66The Tirikāla cakkaram culminates in a vision of Śiva as the supreme being, the transcendent, invisible, and unfathomable creator of all that exists. The Puvaṉa cakkaram opens with an account of how from this supreme being the universe arises as the result of a process of differentiation which begins with the emergence of a single androgynous being, neither male nor female, but nevertheless beginning to unfold so that male and female elements are distinguishable within what remains a single entity. From these elements emerges the manifest form of Śiva and then from Śiva, in turn, emerge Śakti and the five forms Sadāśiva, Maheśvara, Rudra, Viṣṇu and Brahmā. Quoting this account in the Malabarisches Heidenthum, Ziegenbalg comments that this is why “these heathens understand under the name Śiva both the supreme being and the highest God,” that is, both the unmanifest and the manifest forms of Śiva. The first part of the Genealogia is devoted to an explanation of this conception of Śiva’s unfolding. The second part deals with the five faces of Śiva which—according to Ziegenbalg—“signify the five great lords or gods, out of which they later make no more than three” (GMG 41r), i.e., Śiva, Viṣṇu, and Brahmā. Ziegenbalg here conflates five agents of Śiva—Brahman, Viṣṇu, Rudra, Maheśvara, and Sadāśiva (the Kāraṇeśvaras or lords of the five kalās “‘portions’ of the cosmos”169)—with the more familiar trimūrti (or “Mummurtigöl,” in Ziegenbalg’s transcription of the Tamil mummūrttikaḷ). The third part of the Genealogia contains the account of village deities for which Ziegenbalg’s work is best known. With the exception of Aiyaṉār, these are all female and are said by Ziegenbalg to have their origin in the Śakti discussed in the first part of the Genealogia (gmg 128v). Although Ziegenbalg draws heavily on other sources for his account of these deities, his understanding of their position in the pantheon was thus drawn from the Tirikāla cakkaram. The fourth part of the Genealogia returns to follow the Tirikāla cakkaram more closely. It includes an account of the thirty-three crore devas, the forty-eight thousand ṛṣis, various celestial beings such as Keṇanātar (Sanskrit: Gaṇanāthas), Kiṉṉarar (Kiṃnaras), and Kimapuruṭar (Kiṃpuruṣas), and finally the guardians of the eight directions. The attention paid to these mostly obscure denizens of Hindu cosmography is somewhat out of place in a work which is now cited, if at all, usually only for its ethnographic content.170 Their place in the Genealogia is explicable only because of the account of them in the Tirikāla cakkaram, where they are mentioned in the calculation of the different lifespans of Rudra and the manifest form of Śiva.
The Tirikāla cakkaram and the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam
67The Puvaṉa cakkaram, of which the Tirikāla cakkaram is a part, is a cosmographic work of a kind well-known in Sanskrit literature where it is more commonly titled Bhuvanakośaḥ. Although in modern times works of this sort have been published independently, it appears that they more commonly formed part of larger works, and served to establish the authority of the work by tracing a lineage back to Śiva. In the Bibliotheca Malabarica, Ziegenbalg reports the provenance of the work as follows:
The secrets of this book were first revealed by Īcuvaraṉ himself to his wife Pārvatī. These were later revealed by her to Nantikēcuraṉ, who is Īcuvaraṉ’s gatekeeper. He later made these secrets known to a great prophet called Tirumūla Tēvar. (bm 110)
68According to cittar tradition, Tirumūlar, the early Śaiva mystic and author of the Tirumantiram, is said to have been the disciple of an alchemist named Nantikēcuran.171 Tirumūlar is also closely connected to Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai, where he took physical form by entering the body of a cowherd and composed the Tirumantiram. It is, however, not clear that an ascription to this early Tirumūlar is intended in Ziegenbalg’s account of the work.172 Zvelebil gives the briefest details of an undated Tirumūlatēvar,173 ascribing to him three works: the Tirumantiramālai, Tirumūlatēvar pāṭalkaḷ and Vālaippañcākkara viḷakkam. Tirumantiramālai is in fact the full title of Tirumūlar’s Tirumantiram and hence the distinction between the work which Zvelebil ascribes to Tirumūla Tēvar and Tirumūlar’s own work is not clear. We have not been able to identify copies of the Tirumūlatēvar pāṭalkaḷ and Vālaippañcākkara viḷakkam, but the title of the latter suggests a work on the five-syllable nama-civāya mantra. There are a number of works of this kind, with different titles,174 closely associated with the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam. Whether Tirumūlar or Tirumūla Tēvar is intended, an association with Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai certainly cannot be ruled out.
69Moreover, as noted above (35), Koppedrayer emphasizes the importance of the idea of a lineage, beginning on Mount Kailasa and transmitted through Nantikēcuran, or Nantitēvar,175 in the self-understanding of the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam. She notes that when referring to themselves corporately: “the ascetics living in the matam at Tiruvavatuturai… use such phrases as the Tirukailai paramparai, the lineage [descending] from Mount Kailasa.”176 Discussing the multiple accounts of the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai kailasa paramparai, she notes that while they differ in their details “early references to the seminal figures simply cite Namaccivaya, Meykantar, and Nanti, yes, always Nanti on Mount Kailasa.”177
70While the catalogue of the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai library does not list a copy of the Puvaṉa cakkaram, there is one final piece of evidence suggesting a connection between works of this sort and the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam. The catalogue of the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library in Chennai records a copy of a work entitled Puvaṉa kōcam which is clearly very similar in content to the Puvaṉa cakkaram. The catalogue describes the work as “a treatise on cosmology as explained in the Śaiva Purāṇas,” and notes that it is part of a bundle purchased in 1938–39 from Sri Muttukkumārasvāmi Ōduvāmūrti of Tinnevelly which includes also several of the works of Umāpati and “Ambalavāṇattamirānār of Tiruvāvaḍutuṛai maṭh.”178
71It is not our argument here that Ziegenbalg’s entire library was derived from the Śaiva maṭams at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram. The lack of any explicit reference to the maṭams means there must be some doubt even about the evidence we have assembled above, most of which is circumstantial rather than direct. As noted, Ziegenbalg himself states that the scribes he sent inland purchased books from the Brahmin widows—although given the restrictions on his travel outside of Tranquebar, he cannot have known exactly the circumstances under which the books were procured. Given what Ebeling calls the “deeply personal” nature of Tamil manuscript culture, in assessing the sources of Ziegenbalg’s collection we should probably lay more weight on his more direct personal contacts with those who would have had access to manuscripts. Jeyaraj states that Aḻakappaṉ procured “several Tamil palm leaf manuscripts” for Ziegenbalg, but neither of the sources Jeyaraj cites indicate this, only that Aḻakappaṉ helped Ziegenbalg in reading Tamil books.179 It is possible that Aḻakappaṉ also procured books, but we are not aware of any such claim in Ziegenbalg’s writings. The key figures are Ziegenbalg’s elderly Tamil tutor, his son Kaṇapati, and the maṇiyakkāraṉ called Kaḷiyapiḷḷai who may have been Kaṇapati’s father-in-law.
Ziegenbalg’s library and his account of Hinduism
72In his edition and in his translation of the Genealogia, Daniel Jeyaraj mentions many of the Tamil works used by Ziegenbalg, including the Tirikāla cakkaram.180 Nevertheless in his account of Ziegenbalg’s sources for the Genealogia, he gives more prominence to European works on India, and to other, more general, works on pagan mythology, than to Ziegenbalg’s Tamil sources.181 Jeyaraj claims that “before his travel to Tranquebar, Ziegenbalg acquired one Latin and four German books about India.”182 The works in question are Joannes Boëmus, Omnivm gentivm mores, leges et ritvs (1562), Abraham Roger, Offne Thür zu dem verborgenen Heydenthum (1663), Baldaeus, Beschreibung der ost-indischen Küsten Malabar und Coromandel (1672), David Nerreter, Der wunderwürdige Juden- und Heiden-Tempel (1701), and Christoph Langhanß, Neue Ost-Indische Reise (1705). Jeyaraj cites Gita Dharampal-Frick, who in turn cites the printed 1714 catalogue of the mission’s library.183 This includes Boëmus, Nerreter, and Langhanß—as well as a further work by Christian Burckhardt, Ost-Indianische Reise-Beschreibung (1693), not noticed by Dharampal-Frick or Jeyaraj. As we have seen Ziegenbalg acknowledges having used Baldaeus, but there is no evidence that he knew Roger’s work, except insofar as it is reproduced in Baldaeus and Nerreter. The catalogue makes no mention of Roger’s Offne Thür, referring only to a Portuguese translation by Roger of a summary of Christian doctrine in dialogue form.184 In the preface to his Malabarisches Heidenthum, Ziegenbalg states explicitly that he has at hand only Baldaeus and Nerreter, and the only European work on Hinduism which we know for sure to have been available to Ziegenbalg in his first years in India—the years which were decisive for forming his view of Hinduism—is Baldaeus. Moreover while Ziegenbalg mentions, in his Malabarisches Heidenthum, that he had read Baldaeus as early as 1706—and, later, Nerreter too—he stresses there that his work is independent of theirs and that he has relied primarily on his reading of Tamil texts (mh 14–15). Nevertheless Baldaeus is identified by Jeyaraj as the source of Ziegenbalg’s belief that the Tamils recognize a single supreme being.185 The discussion above of Ziegenbalg’s dependence on the Tirikāla cakkaram— a work which, it should be recalled, he describes as “virtually the basis of all other Malabarian books” and showing “the genealogy of the gods”—demonstrates that in fact he derives this idea from the vision of the supreme being which the Tirikāla cakkaram culminates and the Puvaṉa cakkaram begins.
73Jeyaraj further suggests Ziegenbalg may have taken the idea of a “genealogy of the gods” itself from Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century Genealogia Deorum Gentilium,186 and that the table at the head of Ziegenbalg’s Genealogia, which structures the work in four parts, may follow a model suggested by Benjamin Hederich in a work on universal history which included an account of Greco-Roman mythology.187 Not only is there not a scrap of evidence that Ziegenbalg knew Hederich’s work, which appears neither in his writings nor in the catalogue of the mission library, but the idea of a genealogy (“Geschlechts-register”) of the gods is already present in Ziegenbalg’s account of the Tirikāla cakkaram in the Bibliotheca Malabarica, which was written in 1708, the year before the publication of Hederich’s book. The idea of a genealogy of the gods is as old as Hesiod, and while Boccaccio’s work may well have been at the back of Ziegenbalg’s mind there ought to be no doubt that the structure of his Genealogia der malabarischen Götter is taken directly from the Tirikāla cakkaram, and that his discovery of Hindu monotheism was the result of his study of this and other Tamil texts.188
A note on the format of the edition
74The text of this edition reproduces the German text of the Bibliotheca Malabarica published by Germann in 1880. Germann’s edition is not easily accessible and is printed in a blackletter typeface which is difficult to read. Where Germann’s text differs significantly from that in the other manuscripts, this has been noted. In the translation which follows, we attempt to stay closer to Ziegenbalg’s German than does Gaur in her translation, and we translate the full text. Ziegenbalg’s transliteration of Tamil words and the titles of the texts is retained in the reprinted German text; the translation provides a transliteration which follows the most widely used conventions. In cases where no manuscript or published edition of the work in question has been identified, and the transliteration is therefore to some degree speculative, this has been indicated by an asterisk preceding the title of the work.
75The translation is augmented by annotations which attempt identification of the work in question, comment on Ziegenbalg’s characterisation of it, and summarise his use of the work and any further account he gives of the work in his other writings. Where two or more closely related works are listed together, the annotation follows the last work.
76Where the work has been published, details of editions have been provided following the annotation. In identifying editions of works published many times we have tried to strike a balance between noting significant historical editions, accessibility, and quality of the published edition, but in many cases—particularly major works of Tamil literature—other editions could have been cited. Where translations into European languages exist, works which include full or substantial translations have been cited. Here the choice of works has been much more limited. Where translations into several languages exist, preference has been given to those into English. Where multiple translations into English exist, we have for the most part relied on the judgments of others in choosing to cite a particular translation. No systematic attempt has been made to cite other critical works on each of the texts in Ziegenbalg’s collection except where these have been relied on in the annotations. References to these works are thus confined to the footnotes, rather than following the editions and translations cited in the main text.
77The marginal references (BM) indicate the numbering provided by Germann in his edition. Where Ziegenbalg’s entry is very short, only a single marginal reference is provided, but because in some cases his entry extends over more than one page, marginal references are typically provided for both the German text and the English translation.
Notes de bas de page
1 Kamil V. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, A History of Indian Literature X. 1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1974), 2.
2 Hans-Werner Gensichen, “B. Ziegenbalgs Rezeption der Tamil-Spruchweisheit”, Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 45, no. 2 (1989): 86.
3 Ziegenbalg to Christian von der Linde, Tranquebar, 5 September 1706, in Arno Lehmann, ed., Alte Briefe aus Indien: Unveröffentlichte Briefe von Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg 1706–1719 (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1957), 32–3. Both here and in an earlier letter (Ziegenbalg to friends in Germany, Cape of Good Hope, 30 April 1706, in ibid., 25), Ziegenbalg emphasizes his reluctance.
4 Ziegenbalg to Francke, Berlin, 7 October 1705, in ibid., 21.
5 Ziegenbalg to von der Linde, Tranquebar, 5 September 1706, in ibid., 33.
6 Ziegenbalg to Francke, Tranquebar, 1 October 1706, in ibid., 43. Cf. Ziegenbalg to friends in Germany, Cape of Good Hope, 30 April 1706, in ibid., 25.
7 Baldaeus’s work, first published in Dutch in 1672, was translated into German the same year. The third section, on the “Idolatry of the East-Indian Heathens” (edited by Albertus Johannes de Jong, Afgoderye der Oost-Indische Heydenen door Philippus Baldaeus opnieuw utgegeven en van inleiding en aantekeningen voorzien (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1917)), is taken almost entirely from two earlier works, one by a Portuguese Jesuit, Jacobo Fenicio (Jarl Charpentier, The Livro da seita dos Indios orientais (Brit. mus. MS. Sloane 1820) of Father Jacobo Fenicio, S.J. (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1933), lxxxiii–lxxxiv), and the other by a Dutch artist, Philips Angel (Siegfried Kratzsch, “Die Darstellung der zehn Avatāras Viṣṇus bei Philippus Baldaeus und ihre Quellen”, in Kulturhistorische Probleme Südasiens und Zentralasiens, ed. Burchard Brentjes and Hans-Joachim Peuke (Halle: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1984), 105–19). Ziegenbalg’s use of Baldaeus’s work is discussed further below (31, 44).
8 Ziegenbalg, Cape of Good Hope, 30 April 1706, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 25.
9 Willem Caland, ed., B. Ziegenbalg’s Kleinere Schriften, Verhandelingen der Kon. Akad. der Wetensch., Afd. Letterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks, XXIX/2 (Amsterdam: Uitgave van Koninklijke Akademie, 1930), 11.
10 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 16 September 1706, in Joachim Lange, ed., Merckwürdige Nachricht aus Ost-Jndien Welche Zwey Evangelisch-Lutherische Prediger Nahmentlich Herr Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg… Und Herr Heinrich Plütscho… den 30. April 1706. aus Africa… Und bald darauf aus Trangebar von der Küste Coromandel, an einige Predige und gute Freunde in Berlin überschrieben.… Die andere Auflage (Leipzig and Franckfurt am Mayn: Joh. Christoph Papen, 1708), 14.
11 Ziegenbalg to Francke, Tranquebar, 1 October 1706, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 44.
12 Ziegenbalg’s servant Mutaliyāppaṉ, who knew Portuguese and Tamil and was learning German from Ziegenbalg, translated from Ziegenbalg’s rudimentary Portuguese in these early exchanges (Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 16 September 1706, in Lange, Merckwürdige Nachricht, 14). By 12 October 1706, Ziegenbalg and his colleague had the services of a former translator to the Danish East-India Company named Aḻakappaṉ who, in addition to Portuguese and Tamil, knew Danish, German, and Dutch (Kurt Liebau, ed., Die malabarische Korrespondenz: tamilische Briefe an deutsche Missionare; eine Auswahl, Fremde Kulturen in alten Berichten (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1998), 20).
13 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 2 September 1706, in Christian Gustav Bergen, ed., Herrn Bartholomäi Ziegenbalgs und Herrn Heinrich Plütscho… Brieffe, Von ihrem Beruffund Reise nach Tranqvebar, wie auch Bißhero geführten Lehre und Leben unter den Heyden… An einige Prediger und gute Freunde… geschickt, Jetzund vermehret, mit etlichen Erinnerungen, und einem Anhange unschädlicher Gedancken von neuem herausgegeben von Christian Gustav Bergen. Die dritte Aufflage (Pirna: Georg Balthasar Ludewig, 1708), 21.
14 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 25 September 1706, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 40.
15 Caland, Ziegenbalg’s Kleinere Schriften, 11.
16 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 2 September 1706, in Bergen, Ziegenbalgs… Brieffe, 19. Cf. Ziegenbalg’s comment in a letter written a fortnight later: “Ich muß bezeigen, daß mir mein 70. Jahriger Schulmeister offt, solche Philosophische Fragen fürleget, daraus ich abnehmen kan, daß in ihren Büchern schon solche Sachen würden angetroffen werden, daran die Gelehrten in Europa ihrer Curiosität ein Genügen thun könten. Ich suche mit Fleiß dahinter zu kommen, und lass sie mit grossen Unkosten abschreiben.” (Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 16 September 1706, in Lange, Merckwürdige Nachricht, 16).
17 Versions of the letter were published in both German and English. The following summary is taken from the full transcription in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 77.
18 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. For more detailed accounts of the episode, see Anders Nørgaard, Mission und Obrigkeit: Die Dänisch-hallische Mission in Tranquebar, 1706–1845 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus/Gerd Mohn, 1988), 41–48 and Ulla Sandgren, The Tamil New Testament and Bartholomäus 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, 1991), 91–95.
19 See Daniel Jeyaraj, Erschliessung der Tamil-Palmblatt-Manuskripte (Halle: Archiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2001).
20 The first Tamil work to be printed, in 1713, was a tract on akkiyāṉam, “heathenism.” Cf. Will Sweetman, “Heathenism, Idolatry and Rational Monotheism among the Hindus: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Akkiyāṉam (1713) and Other Works Addressed to Tamil Hindus”, in Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, ed. Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss and Heike Liebau (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006), 1249–75.
21 hb 6: 283. Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Ziegenbalg’s Malabarisches Heidenthum, ed. Willem Caland, Verhandelingen der Kon. Akad. der Wetensch., Afd. Letterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks, XXV/3 (1711; Amsterdam: Uitgave van Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, 1926).
22 Ācārakōvai (bm 44) is often quoted in this regard, see also the works listed below, 129.
23 See below, 38–40.
24 On a number of occasions, Ziegenbalg cites the titles of sections of larger works. Jeyaraj’s higher estimate of eighty-seven Tamil works mentioned in the Genealogia results from his taking each of these as a separate work. Thus he lists separately Tiruvācakam and “Vāḻāppattu,” the twentyeighth poem of Tiruvācakam. See Daniel Jeyaraj, Genealogy of the South Indian Deities: An English Translation of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Original German Manuscript with a Textual Analysis and Glossary (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 202, 330.
25 Ziegenbalg to Lange, Tranquebar, 22 December 1710 in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 173.
26 hb 6: 315. Ziegenbalg spent six months (July 1711 to January 1712) in and around Madras.
27 Ziegenbalg and Gründler to Anton Wilhelm Böhme, Tranquebar, 16 September 1712, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 236. Pace Brijraj Singh, this was never printed, although it was sent to Europe (Brijraj Singh, The First Protestant Missionary to India: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1683–1719) (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 168).
28 Ziegenbalg, Gründler and Jordan to Francke, Tranquebar, 17 November 1712 in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 276.
29 Ziegenbalg, Gründler and Jordan to Böhme, Tranquebar, 5 January 1713 in ibid., 283–84.
30 A much later mission report stated that the letters were, “for the most part,” written by Ziegenbalg’s early translator, Aḻakappaṉ (hb 25: 149). This, however, is in the context of explaining why the missionaries at the time (Nikolaus Dal, Martin Bosse, Christian Friedrich Pressier, and Christoph Theodosius Walther) had been unable to engage any Tamils in correspondence and the source of their knowledge is unclear, as none had been in India during Ziegenbalg’s lifetime and Dal, the most senior of the four, had arrived only six months before the death of Gründler. On the evidence of the letters themselves, including the letters quoted in his Genealogia, and of Ziegenbalg’s broader correspondence, it is not implausible to think that a number of other authors were involved.
31 Ziegenbalg to Michaelis, Bergen, 5 June 1715; Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 22 September 1707, in ibid., 421, 59. For identification of this work see Will Sweetman, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, the Tranquebar Mission, and ‘the Roman Horror’”, in Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, ed. Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss and Heike Liebau (Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2006), 802).
32 A facsimile reprint with brief introduction by Burchard Brentjes and Karl Gallus appeared in 1985: Grammatica Damulica von Bartolomaeus Ziegenbalg, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Wissenschaftl. Beiträge, 44 = I 32 (1716; Halle: Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 1985).
33 Ziegenbalg and Gründler to the Mission Board in Copenhagen, Tranquebar, 20 November 1717, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 421, 59. This scholar was Kaṇapati Vāttiyār, who took the name Friedrich Christian at his baptism. He had earlier been an important source of books for Ziegenbalg’s collection (see below, 32f.). There is no trace of his book, although an earlier manuscript by him survives (AFSt/M tam 87).
34 Bibliotheca Malabarica, bestehende in unterschiedlichen malabarischen Büchern, so da handeln I. von der reinen Evangelischen Religion, II. von der unreinen Papistischen Religion, III. von der heynischen Religion der Malabaren, IV. von der Mahometanischen Religion der Mohren, gesammelt und zum Theil selbsten gescrieben von Bartholomeo Ziegenbalg von Seiner Königl. Majestät zu Dennemarck und Norwegen etc. verordneten Missionario unter den malabarischen Heyden auf der Küste Coromandel zu Tranquebar.
35 The letter which accompanied the text of the Bibliotheca Malabarica, together with descriptions—taken from the first section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica—of Ziegenbalg’s sermons, and of the two dictionaries he compiled, was printed in Halle in 1710 in a work later incorporated in the Hallesche Berichte. The full text of the remainder was published by Wilhelm Germann in 1880 (“Ziegenbalgs Bibliotheca Malabarica”, Missionsnachrichten der Ostindischen Missionsanstalt zu Halle 22 (1880): 1–20, 61–94).
36 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 22 September 1707, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 59.
37 As Ziegenbalg had reported just three days earlier, that “preaching and catechising in public” in Tamil was still “a little too hard” for him (Ziegenbalg to Frederik IV, Tranquebar, 19 September 1707, in ibid., 55) we can assume that he means within eight months of acquiring the Catholic works in Tamil, not within eight months of his arrival in Tranquebar.
38 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 9–10.
39 Stephen Neill, A History of Christianity in India, vol. I: The Beginnings to AD 1707 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 304.
40 A brief account in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses (Guy Tachard to Père de la Chaise, Pondicherry, 16 February 1702 in Charles le Gobien, ed., Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrit des missions étrangères par quelques missionaires de la Compagnie de Jésus, 34 vols., Paris (Chez Nicolas Le Clerc, 1702–76), 3: 212–16) reports that many Christians were driven out of Tanjore, and two Jesuits were imprisoned. Although one of many, at the time of Shahji’s death in 1712 this event was recalled as particularly severe—and as resulting in the exclusion of missionaries from Tanjore until 1712 (Louis de Bourzes, Litterae Annuae Missionis Madurensis, 1712).
41 We are grateful to Torsten Tschacher for his comments on these works.
42 Ronit Ricci, Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 98–128.
43 See below (23–27) for details of two partial copies of this section (the Sloane and Mackenzie Collection manuscripts) and of Walther’s edition of Ziegenbalg’s catalogue.
44 Kathleen Iva Koppedrayer, “The Sacred Presence of the Guru: The Velala lineages of Tiruvavatuturai, Dharmapuram, and Tiruppanantal” (PhD diss., McMaster University, 1990), 163.
45 “Sámawédum, Urúkkuwédum, Edirwárnawédum und Adirwédum” (hb 7: 374).
46 The letters published in the seventh and eleventh instalments of the Hallesche Berichte as the “Malabarische Correspondenz” are often assumed to have been chosen, translated, and annotated by Ziegenbalg. In his edition of some of these letters, Kurt Liebau argues that in fact the translation and annotations are substantially the work of Gründler (Liebau, Malabarische Korrespondenz, 26–27). However, as Liebau acknowledges, Gründler used Ziegenbalg’s works on Hinduism for the annotations and they repeat many details which are to be found in the Malabarisches Heidenthum and Genealogia which were written just prior to and just following, respectively, the annotation of the first batch of letters. We can therefore assume that Ziegenbalg would have identified himself with the position of the annotations, although he might not have been responsible for the way in which that position was expressed. We therefore do not attach importance to the question of which of the missionaries was responsible for the annotations and refer to the author of the annotations only as “the missionary,” intending thereby to indicate their joint agency and to avoid the problem of distinguishing their precise contribution.
47 On the concept of the “branch story” (kiḷaikkatai) in Tamil literature see Paula Richman, Women, Branch Stories, and Religious Rhetoric in a Tamil Buddhist Text (Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 1988), 37–39.
48 mh 24–26, 29–33, 50, 52–56, 58–62, 68–69, 74, 78–79, 102, 144–48, 151–52, 161–63, 169–71, 204–5, 221–22, 249–51. The text of Ziegenbalg’s manuscript seems to have differed slightly from that found in most published editions of Parañcōti’s work. Although the order of episodes is mostly the same—and certainly follows the later, chronological, ordering of the episodes—from chapters 13 to 28 Ziegenbalg consistently numbers the episodes one lower, and from 30 to 38 one higher, than Parañcōti. The early episodes he cites (2–4) are also numbered higher, but from 48 to 64 his numbering is the same as that in published editions of the purāna.
49 See the section on Śaiva purāṇams in the Genealogia below (131).
50 See the discussion in Richard S. Weiss, Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 47–50.
51 Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HIL), 193; V. Murugan, A Dictionary of Tamil Literary and Critical Terms (Chennai: Institute of Asian Studies, 1999), s.v. ciṟṟilakkiyam.
52 Kamil V. Zvelebil, Companion Studies to the History of Tamil Literature (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 271.
53 Paula Richman, Extraordinary Child: Poems from a South Indian Devotional Genre (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 238.
54 Crispin Branfoot, Gods on the Move: Architecture and Ritual in the South Indian Temple (London: British Academy/Society for South Asian Studies, 2007), 128.
55 Maṭal refers to the jagged stem of a palmyra leaf on which a man vows to die by riding like a horse if his beloved will not accept him.
56 “A poem in which the last syllable or foot of the last line of a stanza… is identical with the first syllable or foot of the following stanza” (Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HIL), 195).
57 Short, sophisticated poems in eight stanzas.
58 Poem of one hundred stanzas.
59 Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HIL), 216.
60 See also the reference above to folk works in Ziegenbalg’s collection which represent episodes from the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa.
61 Indira Viswanathan Peterson, “The Evolution of the Kuṟavañci Dance Drama in Tamil Nadu: Negotiating the ‘Folk’ and the ‘Classical’ in the Bhārata Nātyam Canon”, South Asia Research 18, no. 1 (1998): 48–49.
62 Ammāṉai is the name given to “a ballad-like narrative genre” of poems which “had in each verse ammāṉāy as refrain” (Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HIL), 195).
63 For details, see the entries for the works below.
64 Hephzibah Israel, “Protestant Translations of the Bible in Indian Languages”, Religion Compass 4, no. 2 (2010): 88.
65 Shu Hikosaka and G. John Samuel, A Descriptive Catalogue of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts in Tamil, 5 vols. (Madras: Institute of Asian Studies, 1990–97), 1: xvi.
66 Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HIL), 2.
67 The catalogues of manuscripts which the Jesuits sent to Paris in the 1720s and 1730s offer ample evidence for their knowledge of, and access to, Indian literature. See, for example, the catalogue of manuscripts sent in 1729–35 (Bibliothèque nationale NAF 5442), printed in Henri Auguste Omont, Missions archéologiques françaises en Orient aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Imprimerie nationale: Paris, 1902), 1179–92.
68 See, for example, the Relation des erreurs qui se trouvent dans la religion des gentils malabars de la Coste Coromandelle. This work—which has been variously attributed to Roberto de Nobili, João de Brito, and Jean Venant Bouchet—opens, much like Ziegenbalg’s Genealogia, with a discussion of Hindu conceptions of the divine. Unlike Ziegenbalg, however, the author makes only the most general of references to his textual sources: “dans un endroit de leur doctrine… ils disent que Dieu est une substance spirituelle et immense, et quelques lignes apres ils assurent que l’air est Dieu” (Willem Caland, ed., Twee oude Fransche verhandelingen over het hindoeïsme, Verhandelingen der Kon. Akad. der Wetensch., Afd. Letterkunde. Nieuwe Reeks, XXIII/3 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923), 3).
69 For example, Apirāmi antāti (bm 25) or Ulakanīti (bm 100).
70 Ziegenbalg to Michael Weitzmann, Tranquebar, 7 October 1709, in Alte Briefe, 120.
71 Civārccaṉā pōtam, *Apiṣēkappalaṉ, Snāṉaviti, Tirumantiram, Cāmuttirikā laṭcaṇam, Kanta purāṇam, Viruttācala purāṇam, and Piramōttara kāṇṭam.
72 Christian Friedrich Pressier to Francke, Tranquebar, 10 January 1726:
H. Walther hat schon geschrieben, daß die von Sel. Pr. Ziegenbalg mit großer Mühe verfertigten Göttergenealogie uns hier fehlt. Ew. Hoch-Ehw. wollen doch Sorge tragen, daß uns dieselbe übersandt werde. Es muß nach dem Tode deßelben nicht recht nach den Büchern gesehen worden seyn. Er hatte viele kostbare Malabarische Bücher angeschafft, selbige sind meistens distrahiert, und haben diejenigen die was davon erhalten können, es zu sich genommen und verkaufft. Ein Schulmeister, der damals noch Schulknabe gewesen erzehlt; Als es mahl etwas kalt gewesen, so hätte da ein Kasten mit dergleichen Olesbüchern gestanden, den hätten sie in Gegenwart des Schulmeisters geöffnet, von den Büchern ein Feuer angezündet, und sich dabey gewärmet.… Solte der Sel. Zieg. vorher gewußt haben, daß sein Ende so nahe, so würde er ohne Zweifel den Successoribus zum besten noch alle dergleichen dingen in bessere disposition gebracht und davon Nachricht hinterlaßen haben.
Archiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen/Missionsarchiv (AFSt/M) 1 B 2: 41.
73 Christoph Theodosius Walther, Bibliotheca Tamulica, consistens in recensione librorum nostrorum, mscr-torum ad cognoscendam et linguam & res Tamulicas inseruientium, 1731, Royal Library, Copenhagen, Ny. Kgl. Saml. 589C, 3.
74 Zvelebil, Companion Studies, 43–91. On this trope see also Herman Tieken, “Blaming the Brahmins: Texts Lost and Found in Tamil Literary History”, Studies in History 26, no. 2 (2010): 227–43.
75 Norman Cutler, Songs of Experience: the Poetics of Tamil Devotion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 55.
76 In 1857, William Taylor wrote “I was told some years ago that the ascetics (or Pandárams) of the Saiva class seek after copies of this poem with avidity, and uniformly destroy every copy they find. It is by consequence, rather scarce, and chiefly preserved by native Christians” (William Cooke Taylor, A Catalogue Raisonnée [sic] of Oriental Manuscripts in the Library of the (late) College, Fort Saint George, now in charge of the Board of Examiners, 3 vols. (Madras: Printed by H. Smith, 1857–62), 3: 26); cf. Zvelebil, Companion Studies, 47.
77 Zvelebil, Companion Studies, 44–46.
78 Rebecca Knuth, Burning Books and Leveling Libraries: Extremist Violence and Cultural Destruction (Westport: Praeger, 2006), 80–87. Perhaps the closest analogy however is the fate of the manuscripts collected by Francis Whyte Ellis. Like Ziegenbalg, he died prematurely and, according to Walter Elliot, a cook is said to have used his manuscripts to light the kitchen fire (Thomas R. Trautmann, Languages and Nations: The Dravidian Proof in Colonial Madras (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 77, 107). Evelyn Masilamani-Meyer notes that “professional singers use palm leaf manuscripts as fire wood to cook their meagre portions of rice” (“The Changing Face of Kāttavarāyan”, in Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees: Essays on the Guardians of Popular Hinduism, ed. Alf Hiltebeitel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 98).
79 At a conference in 2006 marking the tercentenary of Ziegenbalg’s arrival in India, one scholar argued that the manuscripts, like the Elgin marbles or the Rosetta stone, represented a stolen patrimony that should be returned to Tamil Nadu.
80 Jeyaraj, Tamil-Palmblatt-Manuskripte.
81 This catalogue, exists in a number of forms: in German under the title “Katalog der in Madras, Tranquebar, Kopenhagen und Halle vorhandenen Bücher in telugischer und tamilischer Sprache,” dated 17 December 1744 (AFSt/M 2 B 7: 13); in Latin under the title “Catalogus. Librorum et Tractatuum, quos partim in Tamulicam, Telugicam, Hindostanicam, Lusitanicam etc. linguas transtulit, partim ipse conscripsit. 1720-1748,” dated 17 December 1744 (AFSt/M 2 B 7: 14a); and in Tamil characters under the Tamil title “Tamiḻpottakaṅkaḷuṭaiya aṭṭavaṇai” and with a note in German “Verlangtes Verzeichniß unserer Malabarischen Bücher,” undated (AFSt/M 2 B 7: 14b). See also the earlier catalogue by Walther, discussed below (25).
82 Ziegenbalg to [J. J. Breithaupt, P. Antonius, A. H. Francke], Tranquebar, 15 October 1709, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 120.
83 Lütkens died in 1712, but although it is possible Rostgaard acquired the whole catalogue after his death, the fact that the other sections are missing, and the “thin ornate hand” in which it is written, suggests the Sloane manuscript is more likely to have been a copy made in Europe (Albertine Gaur, “Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Verzeichnis der Malabarischen Bücher”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1967): 63).
84 Gaur, “Ziegenbalg’s Verzeichnis der Malabarischen Bücher”.
85 See the closing comments in Gaur’s earlier article describing the Sloane manuscript, which suggest she thought the Bibliotheca Malabarica to have been something other than the “Verzeichnis der Malabarischen Bücher” (Albertine Gaur, “A Catalogue of B. Ziegenbalg’s Tamil Library”, The British Museum Quarterly 30, nos. 3/4 (1966): 104).
86 Ibid., 88–95.
87 Ibid., 67.
88 Several of Gaur’s comments are helpful; others reveal a limited knowledge of Tamil literature, notably her identification of the sixteenth-century Ariccantira purāṇam as “a poem from the Saṅgham period” (Gaur, “Ziegenbalg’s Verzeichnis der Malabarischen Bücher”, 72).
89 Where the differences are significant, they have been noted in the translation below.
90 Arno Lehmann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica: eine wieder entdeckte Handschrift”, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Gesellschafts- und Sprachwissenschaftliche Reihe 8 (1959): 905.
91 Christian Benedict Michaelis to Ziegenbalg, Gründler and Johannes Berlin, Halle, 1 December 1717 (AFSt/M: 1 C 10: 43).
92 “Recherches Historiques sur l’Etat ancien & moderne de la Religion Chrêtienne dans les Indes”, Tome premier, in Dissertations historiques sur divers sujets (Rotterdam: Chez Reinier Leers, 1707). Cf. Sylvia Murr, “Indianisme et militantisme protestant. Veyssière de La Croze et son Histoire du Christianisme des Indes”, Dix-huitième siècle 18 (1896): 303–23.
93 Mathurin Veyssière de La Croze, Histoire du christianisme des Indes (La Haye: les frères Vaillant et N. Prévost, 1724), 445.
94 Tolkāppiyam (bm 1), Tivākaram (bm 4), Kāraṇai viḻupparaiyaṉ vaḷamaṭal (bm 27), Civavākkiyam (bm 51–3); ibid., 494–96.
95 The story of the devadāsī Poṉṉaṇiyāḷ, ibid., 486–87.
96 Ibid., 470–73.
97 Ibid., 467–68, 473–75.
98 Friedrich Wiegand, “Mathurin Veyssière La Croze als Verfasser der ersten deutschen Missionsgeschichte”, Beiträge zur Förderung Christlicher Theologie 6, no. 3 (1902): 97; Georg Christian Bohnstedt, Herrn M. V. La Croze, Abbildung Des Indianischen Christen-Staats (Halle im Magdeburgischen: Spörl, Grunert, 1727).
99 Urs App argues that prior to the Voltaire’s discovery of the Ezour-Vedam, and the works of the English deists, J. Z. Holwell and Alexander Dow, it was the extracts from Ziegenbalg in La Croze which provided Voltaire’s primary evidence of an ancient Indian monotheism which served his attack on established Christianity (The Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010)).
100 The exception is a translation into Telugu by Schultze of a hundred rules on conduct.
101 Walther, Bibliotheca Tamulica, 68.
102 Ibid., 69.
103 Walther, Bibliotheca Tamulica, 3.
104 British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, Mss Eur Mack Gen 21 ff.147–60.
105 These details of Cockburn’s life are taken from the account in Charles Lawson, Memories of Madras (London: Swan, 1905), 179–90.
106 NHB 42: 554. John translated Koṉṟai vēntaṉ (AFSt/M 1 C 29b: 106) and Ulakanīti (AFSt/M 2 B 7: 7), as well as Ātticūṭi and Mūturai (AFSt/M 2 B 7: 5–6) into German. His English translations of Koṉṟai vēntaṉ, Ātticūṭi and another work of Auvaiyār, now lost, entitled Kalviyoḻukkam were published in the Asiatick Researches.
107 Hanco Jürgens, “Forschungen zu Sprachen und Religion”, in Geliebtes Europa / Ostindische Welt: 300 Jahre interkultureller Dialog im Spiegel der Dänisch-Hallesche Mission, ed. Heike Liebau (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2006), 131.
108 Taylor, Catalogue Raisonnée 3: 298.
109 On the scholarly work of John and Rottler see Andreas Nehring, “Natur und Gnade: Zu Theologie und Kulturkritik in den Neuen Halleschen Berichten”, in Missionsberichte aus Indien in 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Bergunder (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 1999), 220–245. Nehring rebuts the charge, levelled by several nineteenth-century mission historians that the “enlightened” temper of John and Rottler contributed to the decline of the mission, arguing that they ought instead to be seen as responding to intellectual developments by seeking a new model for mission among Tamils (242–44).
110 Abraham Roger, De Open-Deure tot het Verborgen Heydendom Ofte Waerachtigh vertoogh van het Leven ende Zeden; mitsgaders de Religie, ende Godsdienst der Bramines, op de Cust Chormandel, ende de Landen daar ontrent, ed. Willem Caland, Werken Uitgegeven door De Linschoten-Vereeniging (1651;’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915), 20.
111 Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, A Code of Gentoo Laws, or Ordinations of the Pundits: From a Persian Translation Made from the Original, Written in the Shanscrit Language (London: n.p., 1776), xxxvi.
112 Nehru’s comments are cited by Cannon (Garland Cannon, The Life and Mind of Oriental Jones: Sir William Jones, the Father of Modern Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 229), who notes that “no evidence for this account has been found” and suggests the reasons had more to do with the time of year that Jones sought a teacher, than any reluctance on the part of the Brahmins.
113 Jean-Marie Lafont, “The Quest for Indian Manuscripts by the French in the Eighteenth Century”, in Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations, 1630–1976 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2000), 90–118.
114 Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 25 September 1706, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 40. Cf. Ziegenbalg to Michael Weitzmann, Tranquebar, 7 October 1709, in ibid., 120.
115 P. Dahmen, “Lettres de Père Calmette”, Revue d’Histoire des Missions (1934): 109–125.
116 “Wenn sie nicht eine so große Liebe zu mir hätten und von mir eine aufrichtige Gegenliebe verspürten, so würden mir sie diese nicht zukommen lassen, wenn ich ihnen gleich für ein jedes Blatt einen Dukaten geben wollte.” Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 25 September 1706, in ibid., 40.
117 Sascha Ebeling, “The College of Fort St George and the Transformation of Tamil Philology during the Nineteenth Century”, in The Madras School of Orientalism: Producing Knowledge in Colonial South India, ed. Thomas R. Trautmann (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009), 238.
118 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 63.
119 Of the letters printed in Lange and Bergen only one is extant in manuscript.
120 The first edition, which appeared already in 1706, contained only one letter, written from the Cape of Good Hope.
121 The second edition edited by Lange appeared in 1708. A further edition by Lange in 1709 was described as a third edition on the title page although Bergen’s edition, also described as the third on the title page, had already appeared in 1708.
122 “Ich war vor einigen Tagen bey einem alten Schul-Lehrer, und hat, daß er mir die drey letzten für gute Bezahlung in ihrer Sprache abschreiben möchte: Aber er konte sich dazu nicht resolviren, indem es wieder ihr Gesätze wäre, einem Christen dergleichen zukommen zu lassen.” (Lange, Merckwürdige Nachricht, 11); cf. “Dergleichen ungereimte Erzehlungen haben die Malabaren in ihren Versen treflich annehmlich zu lesen gemacht, wollen sie aber keinen Christen zukommen lassen, wenn man ihnen gleich viel Geld anbiethet” (ibid., 12).
123 “Die drey letzten lasse ich mir anitzo mit grossen Unkosten in Malabarischer Sprache abschreiben, damit ich von deren Inhalt eine rechte Gewißheit bekommen möge. Wiewohl sie solches noch keinem Christen gethan haben, und würden es auch mir nicht thun, wenn ich mich nicht, als die Apostel, in die durch Freundlichkeit wohl zu schicken wüste, und täglich mit ihnen familiarissime umgienge” (Bergen, Ziegenbalgs… Brieffe, 19). Cf. the comments in Ziegenbalg, Tranquebar, 25 September 1706, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 40, cited above, n. 116.
124 The loss of one of the four Vedas, due to Śiva having cut offone of Brahmā’s four heads, is found in Baldaeus, Wahrhaftige ausführliche Beschreibung, 556.
125 “Das erste handle von der Göttlichkeit und den primis principiis omnium rerum, welches aber mit dem einen Haupte, als er einmahls mit Ispara um die Ober-Stelle gezancket, wäre verloren wordern. Das andre Buch handle von den Gewaltigen, welchen die Herrschaft und Metamorphosi omnium rerum zugeschrieben wird. Das dritte soll lauter gute Moralia in sich begreiffen. Das vierdte handle von den schuldigen Pflichten ihres Götzen= Dienstes” (Bergen, Ziegenbalgs… Brieffe, 19).
126 The idea of a “Tamil Veda,” that is, a work or works in some sense equivalent to the Sanskrit Veda but not a direct translation from it, is widespread and found among both Śaivas (Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 57) and Vaiṣṇavas (John Braisted Carman and Vasudha Narayanan, The Tamil Veda: Piḷḷāṉ’s Interpretation of the Tiruvāymoḻi (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 4). Cf. on the development of this idea Cutler, Songs of Experience, 7–10.
127 For a nineteenth-century account of the tiṇṇai or pyal schools see Charles E. Gover, “Pyal Schools in Madras”, The Indian Antiquary 2, no. 14 (1873): 52–56. See also D. Senthil Babu, “Memory and Mathematics in the Tamil Tiṇṇai Schools of South India in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”, International Journal for the History of Mathematics Education 2, no. 1 (2007): 15–37, Bhavani Raman, “Disciplining the Senses, Schooling the Mind: Inhabiting Virtue in the Tamil Tiṇṇai School”, in Ethical life in South Asia, ed. Anand Pandian and Daud Ali (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 43–60, Sascha Ebeling, Colonizing the Realm of Words: The Transformation of Tamil Literature in Nineteenth-Century South India (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 37–39.
128 John Murdoch, Classified Catalogue of Tamil Printed Books with Introductory Notices (Madras: The Christian Vernacular Education Society, 1865), 215–17.
129 Ātticūṭi, Ulakanīti, Koṉṟai vēntaṉ and Mūturai are among those mentioned explicitly by Murdoch. To these we can probably add Nalvaḻi and Nīti veṇpā, which are listed together with Āṭṭicūṭi, Ulakanīti, Koṉṟai vēntaṉ and Mūturai in the Bibliotheca Malabarica (BM 100–105).
130 Murdoch mentions two catakam texts, the Aṟappaḷḷīcura catakam of Ampalacāṇa Kavirāyar and the Nārāyaṇa catakam of Maṇavāḷa. The former may be later than Ziegenbalg (cf. Kamil V. Zvelebil, Lexicon of Tamil Literature, Handbuch der Orientalistik. Abteilung 2: Indien, 9 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 34); the latter is in his collection.
131 Murdoch does not name any particular works, but among those in Ziegenbalg’s collection, Tivākaram and Cūṭāmaṇi nikaṇṭu, would fit the description. Gover mentions “the Nighantu” among the works forming “the grammatical portion of study” (Gover, “Pyal Schools in Madras”, 54).
132 Gover mentions explicitly the Kiruṣṇaṉ tūtu carukkam (an episode from the Uṭṭiyōka paruvam of Villiputtūr āḻvār’s Pāratam) and Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram. Ziegenbalg had the former, and three chapters of the Yutta kāṇṭam of the latter.
133 Ebeling (Colonizing the Realm of Words, 38) notes that Gover’s “Kada Chintamani” (Katacintāmaṇi) could refer to any one of a number of such collections assembled in the nineteenth century. These anthologies postdate Ziegenbalg but he had perhaps a dozen works of the sort they contained, including the Pañcatantira katai (BM 30) which he notes is “much used in schools.”
134 Ziegenbalg to Lütkens, Tranquebar, 22 August 1708, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 79.
135 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 71.
136 Ziegenbalg to Lütkens, Tranquebar, 22 August 1708, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 80.
137 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 84. The sentence reads in full: “Dieses kleine Büchlein hat mein alter Schulmeister gemacht, den ich anfänglich in Erlernung der malabarischen Sprache gebrauchte, dessen Sohn ein guter Poet ist, und mir sehr viele Bücher verschaffet hat, und oftmals mit mir von erbaulichen Sachen zu disputiren pfleget.” See also Ziegenbalg [to Anton Wilhelm Böhme], Tranquebar, 19 October 1709, in Propagation of the Gospel in the East: Being a Further Account of the Progress made by Some Missionaries to Tranquebar… together with Some Observations relating to the Malabarian Philosophy and Divinity: and concerning their Bramans, Pantares, and Poets, Part II., 2nd ed., trans. [Anton Wilhelm Böhme] (London: J. Downing, 1711), 30.
138 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 87.
139 Ziegenbalg to Michael Weitzmann, Tranquebar, 7 October 1709, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 120.
140 Ziegenbalg to Joachim Lange, Tranquebar, 23 October 1709, in ibid., 143.
141 Germann, “Bibliotheca Malabarica”, 83. cf. Ziegenbalg’s description of Kaṇapati’s father-inlaw as a “headman over twenty villages” (Ziegenbalg to Lange, Tranquebar, 23 October 1709, in Lehmann, Alte Briefe, 143).
142 Varukka kōvai is a genre of poems in which a town is celebrated in a series of verses each of which begins with a successive letter of the Tamil alphabet (Zvelebil, Lexicon, s.v. varukka-k kōvai).
143 The others are Kāraṇai viḻupparaiyaṉ vaḷamaṭal (bm 27), Kāyārōṇar ulā (bm 45), Kīḻvēḷūr kalampakam (bm 46), and Varuṇakulātittaṉ maṭal (bm 89).
144 Glenn Yocum, “A Non-Brahman Tamil Saiva Mutt: A Field Study of the Thiruvavaduthurai Adheenam”, in Monastic Life in the Christian and Hindu Traditions: A Comparative Study, ed. Austin B. Creel and Vasudha Narayanan (Lampeter: Edwin Mellon Press, 1990), 268.
145 Zvelebil’s discussion of the literary tradition associated with the maṭams is contained in chapter 10, “Late medieval period (A. D. 1200–1750)” (Kamil V. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature, Handbuch der Orientalistik, Zweite Abteilung, Indien; 2. Bd., 1. Abschnitt (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), 198–232.
146 Ebeling (Colonizing the Realm of Words, 57–62) notes the maṭams’connections with Mīṉāṭcicuntaram Piḷḷai, U. Vē. Cāminātaiyar, and Āṟumuka Nāvalar, and their role in educating many other Tamil scholars of the nineteenth century.
147 By far the most detailed study of the two older maṭams and the Tiruppaṉantāḷ maṭam, established in the early eighteenth century, is Koppedrayer’s doctoral thesis (cited above, 13). Parts of this work have been published in a series of articles (“Are Śūdras Entitled to Ride in the Palanquin?”, Contributions to Indian Sociology 25, no. 2 (1991): 191–210; “The Varṇāśramacandrika and the Śūdra’s Right to Preceptorhood: The Social Background of a Philosophical Debate in Late Medieval South India”, Journal of Indian Philosophy 19, no. 3 (1991): 297–314; “Remembering Tirumālikaittēvar: The Relationship between an Early Śaiva Mystic and a South Indian Matam”, East and West 43, nos. 1–4 (1993): 169–83; “Putting the Picture Together: Ati Amāvācai at Dharmapuram”, East and West 49, nos. 1–4 (1999): 195–216; “The Interweave of Place, Space, and Biographical Discourse at a South Indian Religious Centre”, in Pilgrims, Patrons, and Place: localizing sanctity in Asian religions, ed. Phyllis Granoffand Koichi Shinohara (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2003), 279–96). In addition there is a helpful study of the contemporary Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam by Glenn Yocum (“Non-Brahman Tamil Saiva Mutt”). Geoffrey Oddie provides information, drawn from revenue records, about the temples controlled by the maṭams in the nineteenth-century and other information from legal records of disputes between the Tarumapuram and Tiruppaṉantāḷ maṭams (“The Character, Role and Significance of Non-Brahmin Saivite Maths in Tanjore District in the Nineteenth Century”, in Changing South Asia: Religion and Society, ed. Kenneth Ballhatchet and David D. Taylor, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Published for the Centre of South Asian Studies in the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, by Asian Research Service, 1984), 37–50, reprinted with some revisions in Hindu and Christian in South-East India (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1991), 98–118). K Nambi Arooran provides brief details about the history of the maṭams in two short articles (“The Origin of Three Saiva Mathas in Tanjavur District”, in Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India, January 1981, ed. M. Arunachalam, vol. 2 (Madras: International Association of Tamil Research, 1981), 12–77–87; “The Changing Role of Three Saiva Maths in Tanjore District from the Beginning of the 20th Century”, in Changing South Asia: Religion and Society, ed. Kenneth Ballhatchet and David D. Taylor, vol. 1 (Hong Kong: Published for the Centre of South Asian Studies in the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London, by Asian Research Service, 1984), 51–58). Ebeling (Colonizing the Realm of Words, 307) cites a recent short history in Tamil of the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam (Ci. Makāliṅkam, Tirukkayilāya paramparait Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai ātīṉam varālaṟṟuc curukkam. Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai: Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai ātīṉam Caracuvati Makāl Nūlnilaiya Āyvu Maiyam, 2002).
148 R. Champakalakshmi, “The Maṭha: Monachism as the Base of a Parallel Authority Structure”, in Religion, Tradition, and Ideology: Pre-colonial South India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), 286–318.
149 Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”. Ebeling states that the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam “traces its history back to the fourteenth century” (Colonizing the Realm of Words, 61), but this refers only to the lineage of teachers in which the first head of the maṭam, the sixteenth-century Mūvalūr Namacivāyamūrtti, located himself (cf. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HdO), 206).
150 R. Champakalakshmi provides evidence of the wide range of institutions referred to as maṭam (Champakalakshmi, “The Maṭha”). The institutions at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai and Tarumapuram may also be referred to using the term ātīṉam, to indicate that they are autonomous. The Tiruppaṉantāḷ maṭam, being subordinate to Tarumapuram, cannot be referred to as an ātīṉam. The use of ātīṉam can be traced only from the eighteenth century, more than a century after their foundation (Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”, 11–13).
151 Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”, 42–51.
152 Ziegenbalg first uses the term as early as 1707, see below (36).
153 “Asketen und nichbrahmanische [sic] Priester der niedrigen Kasten, oft im Dienst der Śiva-Tempel” (Liebau, Malabarische Korrespondenz, 298). Cf. Gita Dharampal-Frick, “Malabarisches Heidenthum: Bartolomäus Ziegenbalg über Religion und Gesellschaft der Tamilen”, in Missionsberichte aus Indien in 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Michael Bergunder (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 1999), 137.
154 Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”, 74–75.
155 Ibid., 76–77.
156 See, e.g., Daniel Jeyaraj, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie der malabarischen Götter”: Edition der Originalfassung von 1713 mit Einleitung, Analyse und Glossar, Neue Hallesche Berichte: Quelle und Studien zur Geschichte und Gegenwart Südindiens (Halle: Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen zu Halle, 2003), 427, following the Tamil Lexicon and Hobson-Jobson, and Liebau, Malabarische Korrespondenz, 298, cited above, n. 153.
157 Jean Venant Bouchet—a Jesuit contemporary of Ziegenbalg—indicates a further referent of the term when describing the severe austerities undertaken by a Brahmin who “prit la résolution de parcourir le pais en habit de Pandaron [pénitent des Indes], & de s’attirer par l’austérité de sa vie des aumônes abondantes” (Gobien, Lettres édifiantes et curieuses XI, 21).
158 bm 107. Similarly, when commenting on a text he names as Uṭalkuṟṟu tattuvam (bm 99), Ziegenbalg notes that it is “little known and can be understood neither by Brahmins nor by Paṇṭārams”.
159 HB 8: 531. “Sie antwortet: Hättet ihr unsere Bücher durchlesen, so würdet ihr gantz anders von uns Malabaren und Mohren urtheilen. Ich sprach: Gut, wolt ihr mich als denn besser hören, so will ich gerne die Mühe auf mich nehmen und eure Bücher durchlesen. Lasset mir nur die Besten zu kommen. Sie antwortet: ja, gantz gerne. Darauf ließ ich gleich einen Malabarischen Schreiber ein Verzeichniß von einer ziemlicher Anzahl Bücher aufschreiben, und legte ihnen selbiges vor. Sie sprachen: Wir haben die wenigsten von diesen Büchern; jedoch wollen wir unsern Pantaren, Bramanen, und Schulmeistern Befehl geben, daß sie umher suchen sollen, ob dergleichen ausgeforschet werden können: Unterdessen würde man diejenigen Autores, die solche geschrieben, wieder vom Tode auferwecken müssen, wenn man dergleichen Bücher recht verstehen solte. Ich sagte: Es hat mir dieser Schwierigkeit nichts zu bedeuten. Vielleicht ist anjetzo die Zeit, da sie sollen aufgelöset werden: schaft ihr mir nur fein viele, ich will sie entweder bezahlen, oder mir abschreiben lassen. Sie versprachen mir solches, und nahmen ihren Abschied.”
160 Tērūrnta vācakam (BM 77), Tiyākarāca paḷḷu (BM 90). Only the latter is known to be ascribed to Ñānappirakācar in other sources, but Ñānappirakācar is associated with Tiruvārūr, where the former is set. Tarumapuram also administered the “rājan kaṭṭaḷai” endowment at the Tiruvārūr temple (Rajeshwari Ghose, The Lord of Ārūr. The Tyāgarāja Cult in Tamiḻnāḍu: A Study in Conflict and Accommodation (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1996), 255).
161 The temple is also linked with the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam, in that the liṅkam worshipped by Namaccivāyamūrtti was named Vaidyanātha, Śiva at Vaitīcuvaraṉkōyil (Yocum, “Non-Brahman Tamil Saiva Mutt”, 255).
162 The Amṛtaghaṭeśvara temple in Tirukkaṭavūr, very close to Tranquebar, from which Ziegenbalg had the Apirāmi antāti (BM 25), was also managed by the Tarumapuram maṭam.
163 Thus, e.g., Uḷḷamuṭaiyāṉ (BM 75), which Ziegenbalg links to the paṇṭārams, is ascribed by him to Taṉvantiri, a cittar who is said to dwell at Vaitīcuvaraṉkōyil. More indirectly still, Vīrai Kavirācapaṇṭitar’s Tamil version of the Saundaryalaharī (bm 84), is linked by Zvelebil to the maṭams as “centres of Sanskritization” (Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (HdO), 251).
164 David Dean Shulman, Tamil Temple Myths: Sacrifice and Divine Marriage in the South Indian Śaiva Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 32.
165 Ebeling, Colonizing the Realm of Words, 60. Cutler notes that Mīṉāṭcicuntaram Piḷḷai “conducted classes on the Vaiṣṇava Kamparāmāyaṇam at Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai at the request of Cāminātaiyar and other senior pupils” (Norman Cutler, “Three Moments in the Genealogy of Tamil Literary Culture”, in Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, ed. Sheldon Pollock (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 279).
166 The Institute of Asian Studies has published a catalogue of 1266 manuscripts kept at the Tiruvāvaṭutuṟai maṭam (Shu Hikosaka and G. John Samuel, A Descriptive Catalogue of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts in Tamil, vol. 3 (ed. A. Thasarathan) (Madras: Institute of Asian Studies, 1993)), and has also indexed 481 mss. at the Tarumapuram maṭam, but not yet published the catalogue.
167 Jeyaraj mentions Ziegenbalg’s use of the work, but states that “This book is yet to be identified” (Jeyaraj, Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 330). His account of Ziegenbalg’s use of it is discussed further below (43–44).
168 There are a number of other cases where Ziegenbalg includes parts of larger works under separate headings in his catalogue, and in fact the relationship between these two works had already been noticed in an edition of Ziegenbalg’s catalogue prepared in 1731 by a later missionary Christoph Theodosius Walther. In this edition of the catalogue, there is an annotation, in a smaller hand, to the entry for the Tirikāla cakkaram which reads: “This book is inserted into the following one,” i.e., the Puvaṉa cakkaram (Walther, Bibliotheca Tamulica, 53).
169 Richard H. Davis, Ritual in an Oscillating Universe: Worshiping Śiva in Medieval India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 95.
170 See, e.g., Isabelle Nabokov, Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 72.
171 David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 61.
172 There is still less reason to think that this work is as early as Tirumantiram; many later works were attributed to Tirumūlar.
173 Zvelebil, Lexicon, s.v. Tirumūlatēvar.
174 E.g., Pañcākkara taricaṉam, Pañcākkara paḵṟoṭai, Pañcākkara paṟṟiya viḷakkam, Pañcākkara mālai.
175 Ziegenbalg uses the form Nantikēcuran, but the form Nantitēvar is also attested in a manuscript of the Puvaṉa cakkaram in the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library (GOML) in Chennai (tr– 4231).
176 Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”, 233.
177 Koppedrayer, “Sacred Presence”, 144.
178 Syed Muhammad Fazlullah Sahib Bahadur and T. Chandrasekharan, A Triennial Catalogue of Tamil Manuscripts Collected during the Trienniums 1934–35 to 1936–37, 1937–38 to 1939–40 and 1940–41 to 1942–43 for the Government Oriental Manuscripts Library, Madras, vol. 8. Part 2, Tamil. (Madras: Government of Madras, 1949), 2238–52.
179 Jeyaraj, Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 17, citing hb 2: 82 and J. Ferd. [Johannes Ferdinand] Fenger, Geschichte der Trankebarschen Mission nach den Quellen bearbeitet (Grimma: Verlag von J.M. Gebhardt, 1845), 27f.
180 Jeyaraj, Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie”, 286; Jeyaraj, Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 255.
181 Jeyaraj begins his analysis of the Copenhagen ms. of the Genealogia with “Frühe europäische Werke über Indien” (Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie”, 270–76) and only later turns to “Ziegenbalgs Tamilstudium” (Ibid., 280–90).
182 Jeyaraj, Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 199.
183 Catalogo dos livros que se achaõ na bibliotheca da ingreja chamada Jerusalem em Tranquebar (Tranquebar: Na estampa dos Missionarios Reaes de Dennemarck, 1714). Dharampal-Frick writes: “Gewiß war Ziegenbalg bereits als Neuankömmling mit einem Teil der vorliegenden Literatur über Indien vertraut… An Literatur mit thematischem Bezug auf Indien sind dort [in the 1714 catalogue] u.a. Werke von Roger, Baldaeus, Nerreter, Boemus und Langhanß (1705) aufgefürt” (Indien im Spiegel deutscher Quellen der frühen Neuzeit (1500–1750): Studien zu einer interkulturellen Konstellation, Frühe Neuzeit 18 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 101–2).
184 Abraham Roger, Breviario de religiāo christāo em maniera de dialogo pera ensino dos que tem contadide commungar com a ingreja de Deos. E justamenta passos de Sagrada Escritura que servem pera monstrar que a doutrina n’este breviario contenida esta conforme a Sancta Verdade pello R. P. Abrahao Rogerio (Amsterdam: dos erdeiros de P. Matthysz, 1689). The Biographical Dictionary of the History of Dutch Protestantism identifies this work as a translation, but not the author (Doede Nauta, ed., Biografisch lexicon voor de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse protestantisme, vol. 5 (Kampen: Kok, 2001), 433). The Catalogo dos livros identifies an edition published in Middelburg in 1662, but the earliest edition we have found (in the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek) is an edition published in Amsterdam in 1668.
185 Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie”, 275; Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 199.
186 Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie”, 232; Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 200.
187 Ziegenbalgs “Genealogie”, 278–79; Genealogy of the South Indian Deities, 201–2.
188 For discussion of other texts important for Ziegenbalg’s account of Hinduism, notably those of the cittar, see Will Sweetman, “The Prehistory of Orientalism: Colonialism and the Textual Basis for Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg’s Account of Hinduism”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 6, no. 2 (2004): 12–38.
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