Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg () (24 June 1683 – 23 February 1719) was a German Lutheran missionary and the first Pietist missionary to India. Sent under the patronage of Frederick IV of Denmark, he co-founded the Danish-Halle Mission in Tranquebar (present-day Tharangambadi, Tamil Nadu) with Heinrich Plütschau in 1706. Ziegenbalg is noted for producing the first complete translation of the New Testament into Tamil, for introducing the printing press to Protestant mission work in India, and for promoting Tamil literature and education.

Early life

Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 24 July 1683 in a devout Christian family. His father Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Sr. (1640–1694), was a grain merchant, and his mother was Maria née Brückner (1646–1692). Through his father he was related to the sculptor Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, and through his mother's side to the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He studied at the University of Halle under the teaching of August Hermann Francke, then the center of Pietistic Lutheranism. Under the patronage of King Frederick IV of Denmark, Ziegenbalg, along with his fellow student, Heinrich Plütschau, became the first Protestant missionaries to India. They arrived at the Danish colony of Tranquebar on 9 July 1706.

Missionary work

A church of the Syrian tradition was probably born in South India as far back in history as the third century, at least.Leslie Brown, The Indian Christians of St. Thomas (Cambridge University Press, 1982) KP Kesava Menon, in his foreword to Christianity in India (Prakam, 1972), described a church typical of that tradition as "Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and oriental in worship."

Bob Robinson laments the failure of the further forward moment of this potential dialogue between the two religions. He notes that even such supportive European missionary sympathisers of Hinduism as Roberto de Nobili and Ziegenbalg, despite their enthusiasm for this foreign faith, could never shake their conviction of the superiority of their own faith.Gary Snyder, a Buddhist friend and part-time companion of Kerouac and some others from the Beat generation, who’d removed himself beyond theism, for instance, blamed the Bible and its anthropomorphic notion of creation for the earth’s mistreatment by humanity’s hand.

The propagation of the Gospel, despite Danish zeal, remained inchoate till the dawn of the eighteenth century. Frederick IV of Denmark, under the influence of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), a professor of divinity in the University of Halle (in Saxony), proposed that one of the professor's eminently skilled and religiously enthusiastic pupils, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, be appointed to kindle in "the heathen at Tranquebar" the desired holy spark.

Tranquebar Mission

"Though the piety and zeal of Protestants had often excited an anxious desire to propagate the pure and reformed faith of the gospel in heathen countries, the establishment and defence against the Polish adversaries at home, together with the want of suitable opportunities and facilities for so great a work, combined during the first century after the Reformation, to prevent them from making any direct or vigorous efforts for this purpose."The Christian library, Volumes 5-6 (by) Thos. George, Jr. (1835)

Ziegenbalg brought Lutheranism and a printing-press to Tanjore court by ship. The Danes were in control of Tranqubar at that time. After an abortive excursion to Sri Lanka, where there was no room left to be conquered and seized, they made their way to Tranquebar circa 1620. Ove Gjedde who, in 1618, had commandeered the expedition to Lanka, initiated a treaty with the king of Tanjore to rent an area no more than "five miles by three in extent", resulting in the setting up of a fort, which still stands, though the Danes relinquished control of Tranquebar in 1845 to the British.

Printing and India found each other serendipitously. In 1556, a Portuguese ship bound for Abyssinia stopped in Goa to obtain provisions; the ship carried a printing press and 14 Jesuits, one of whom was João de Bustamante, the "Indian Gutenberg". The clergy in Goa hungered for the printing press far more vehemently than their counterparts in Abyssinia and, ultimately, the press was unloaded in Goa, and Bustamante stayed to set up the press at the College of St. Paul, a seminary that still exists.

The arrival of the first press in Goa was rejoiced at by St. Francis Xavier who had been preaching the gospel in Goa and in Tranquebar: Anglicized form of Tharangambadi ('the dashing of the ocean waves on the shore') in Tamil language since 1542. Then inexplicably, and, significantly, all presses died out in India.All the presses were possessed by either the Church or the Portuguese. Zero was set up by Indians and no letters were printed for the rest of the country. Tamil printing seems to have stopped after 1612. Records show that the last books in Latin and Portuguese were printed in Goa in 1674.

Ziegenbalg responded to the King of Denmark's request for the bequest of a Christian mission to spread the vision of the Gospel in India, and in 1706, Ziegenbalg and his colleague Heinrich Plütschau reached the region of Tranquebar, thus becoming the first Protestant missionaries to arrive on the Indian sub-continent and began their revisionary project. After initial conflict with the East India Company, which even led to a four-month incarceration of Ziegenbalg, the two established the Danish-Halle Mission.See, Halle and the beginning of Protestant Christianity in India : Christian mission in the Indian context, volumes 2-3 (edited by) Andreas Gross; Vincent Y. Kumaradoss; Heike Liebau and "Written sources on the Danish-Halle mission (in English and German)" They laboured intensively, despite opposition from the local Hindu and Danish authorities in Tranquebar, baptizing their first Indian converts on 12 May 1707.

Education has always been an integral component of missionary work. Ziegenbalg recognized from the start the imperative of learning the local languages in the progress of their mission. Stephen Neill notes this curious serendipity:

"The original plan was that Ziegenbalg should concentrate on Portuguese and Plütschau on Tamil. For no explicit reason, but to the great advantage of the work, this arrangement was changed, and mastery of Tamil became the primary objective of Ziegenbalg.

He had little to help him. No grammar was available. The Jesuits in the sixteenth century had printed a number of books in Tamil, but the work had been discontinued, and the Lutheran missionaries seem never even to have heard that such printed books existed."Stephen Neill, A History Of Christianity In India 1707-1858, Cambridge University Press, 1985, paperback reprint 2002, p. 32. Retrieved 4 October 2024.

Ziegenbalg possibly spent more time picking up the local tongue than in preaching incomprehensibly and in vain to a people who would then have thought him quite remarkable. He went on to write, in 1709: "I choose such books as I should wish to imitate both in speaking and writing ... Their tongue ...(now) is as easy to me as my mother tongue, and in the last two years I have been able to write several books in Tamil..."The Legacy that Ziegenbalg Left (by). S. Muthiah (The Hindu http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2006/07/02/stories/2006070200200500.htm )

Ziegenbalg was publicly critical of some members of the Brahmin caste, accusing them of disregard for lower castes in Hindu society. For that reason, at least one group plotted to kill him. This reaction by native Indians was unusual and Ziegenbalg's work did not generally encounter unfriendly crowds; his lectures and classes drawing considerable interest from locals.

In 1708, a dispute over whether the illegitimate child of a Danish soldier and a non-Christian woman should be baptized and brought up as a Roman Catholic or a Protestant, resulted in Heinrich Plütschau being brought before a court. Although Plütschau was released, Ziegenbalg wrote that "the Catholics rejoiced, that we were persecuted and they were authorized."

He connected this incident, which he took to have emboldened the Catholics, directly with a second nearly two weeks later, which resulted in his imprisonment. 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. The commander of the Danish fort in Tranquebar, Hassius, regarded Ziegenbalg's repeated intervention in the case, including his advice that the widow 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.

Although released after a little more than four months, Ziegenbalg still had a difficult relationship with Hassius and that was one reason for Ziegenbalg's return to Europe in 1714–1716. Ziegenbalg was also married in 1716. He was active in cooperation with the Anglican Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, making his work one of the first ecumenical ventures in the history of Protestant missionary work.

Stephen Neill suggests, "As a missionary of the Danish crown, ordained in Denmark, Ziegenbalg felt himself bound by the liturgy and customs of the Danish church (…) Only in one respect does [he] seem to have made a concession to the fact that this new church was growing up in India; he made use of the presence in the Christian community of a measure of literary and musical talent to introduce the singing of Tamil lyrics to Indian melodies, in addition to using in church the growing collection of hymns which had been translated from German, but in which the original metres and tunes had been preserved."Stephen Neill, A History Of Christianity In India 1707-1858, Cambridge University Press, 1985, paperback reprint 2002, p. 35. Retrieved 4 October 2024.

Literary work

Translations

The 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism and an explosion of translations of the New (and Old) Testament into the vernacular. After all this time spent in blood-wrenching and sweat-drenching scholarship, Ziegenbalg wrote numerous texts in Tamil, for dissemination among Hindus. He was fully conscious of the importance of print in the history of the Protestant Church.

He commenced his undertaking of translating the New Testament in 1708 and completed it in 1711, though printing was delayed till 1714, because of Ziegenbalg's insistent, perfectionist revisions. Stephen Neill comments, "Only rarely has the first translation of Scripture in a new language been found acceptable. Ziegenbalg’s achievement was considerable; for the first time the entire New Testament had been made available in an Indian language. But from the start, Ziegenbalg’s work was exposed to criticism on a variety of grounds" and that Johann Fabricius’ update on the pioneering text was so clearly superior, "before long the older version ceased to be used."