Ippolito Desideri's Tamil Papers, ARSI Manuscript Goa 76b
The manuscript Goa 76b of Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Rome) gathers together most of Ippolito Desideri's extant Tamil papers. It is written in Tamil, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and French. It relates to two major difficulties he faced during his stay in and around Pondicherry, where he s...
| Published in: | Buddhist Christian studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
University of Hawaii Press
[2018]
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| In: |
Buddhist Christian studies
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| Further subjects: | B
Translation
B Jesuit B Carnatic Mission B Pierre Lalane B eighteenth-century Tamil grammar B Pondicherry B San Tome B eighteenth-century Tamil confessional works B India B Ippolito Desideri |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The manuscript Goa 76b of Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Rome) gathers together most of Ippolito Desideri's extant Tamil papers. It is written in Tamil, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, and French. It relates to two major difficulties he faced during his stay in and around Pondicherry, where he spent one year (1726) in the Jesuit Carnatic Mission: learning Tamil and hearing the confessions of new converts. While he seems not to have had a significant number of Christians to catechize in Tibet, he was asked in the Carnatic Mission to serve throngs of them wanting to confess to Catholic gurus. Contrary to his metaphysical debates in the Tibetan language against the followers of Tibetan Buddhism, he does not seem to have had intellectual and theological exchanges with the Tamil Brahmin elite. He was probably asked to learn at first the vernacular language of his particular area of missionary work. But, had he remained in the Carnatic Mission some more years, he would perhaps have learnt Sanskrit to debate with Brahmins, as did several other French Fathers. The manuscript Goa 76b contains copies of various Christian texts (especially about confession), grammatical notes and parts of Desideri's grammar of Tamil in Latin. It shows that Desideri made fast progress in learning and mastering Tamil, at first under the guidance of Father Pierre Lalane, who finished his grammar of Tamil in French in 1728. It forms part of the rich multilingual corpus of the eighteenth-century Carnatic Mission. The specificity of this literary, theological, catechistic, and ritual corpus is overlooked. The French Jesuits no doubt embraced the legacy of De Nobilis's accommodatio method and used his Tamil works, but their corpus also included post-Denobilian Tamil works as well as the works composed or collected by them in Tamil, Telugu, Kanna?a, and Sanskrit. The problem the Carnatic Mission Fathers faced was not only the translation of Christian terms into an Indian language but also their translation from one Indian language to another. |
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| ISSN: | 1527-9472 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Buddhist Christian studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/bcs.2018.0004 |