Tercentenary of a Protestant missionary celebrated in South India

Nagapattinam – Tranquebar is gearing up for the tercentennial celebrations of the arrival of a Protestant missionary, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, who helped promote Tamil language.

On July 9, 1706, a 24–year–old man – Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg, the first–ever Protestant Missionary to India arrived at Tranquebar coast and no one knew that he was going to make the small town enter into the pages of history.

This German–born Christian Missionary was perhaps the first scholar to globalise Tamil language by introducing Tamil Studies at the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany. This man virtually conferred Tamil the status of ‘Classical Language’ nearly three centuries ago.

Tranquebar is now gearing up for the tercentennial celebrations of the arrival of Ziegenbalg to its land. A two–day national Symposium on Ziegenbalg was organized by the Department of History of TBML College, Porayar, on July 8 and 9. Yearlong celebrations till July 9, 2006 are being planned in the city.

Ziegenbalg was born at Saxony in Germany. When the Denmark King made an appeal to the missionaries to travel to India, Ziegenbalg readily agreed. Though his primary aim was to propagate Christianity in India, his way of moving with the society earned him the respect of the people of all religions and it was probably the first exercise of harmony between Missionaries and other people in the society in India. Ziegenbalg was a humane missionary who tried to understand a culture foreign to him.

Ziegenbalg did more service to the development of Tamil language than propagating Christianity. He had begun his life in Tranquebar first with the help of interpreters and translators. But, he was determined to learn the local language Tamil, and master it in such a way that he would be able to use it for the translation of The Bible and to communicate with the natives in their own language.

Ziegenbalg began to learn writing Tamil letters immediately after his arrival. He had learnt Tamil along with the children in a Tranquebar school sitting on the floor.

He set up the first ever printing press in India at Tranquebar and published studies of the Tamil language. His translation of the New Testament into Tamil in 1715, and the New Jerusalem Church that he and his associates built in 1718, are still in use today.

He also maintained diaries and sent them home periodically. These diaries, together with many station registers, letters exchanged, private papers and so on, presented a vivid picture of every facet of Tamil life – festivals and temples, arts and crafts, music and dance, legends and fables, rituals and religious practices, ceremonies, customs and manners, diseases prevalent among them and the medicines used, and so on.

When he died on February 23, 1719 at the age of 37, this great missionary had achieved a great deal of name and fame. He was buried in The New Jerusalem Church at Tranquebar which was built by him in 1718.

It is a long–pending demand of the people of Tranquebar that a ‘Manimandapam’ should be constructed for this great Tamil savant.