Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library.

Trautmann, Thomas R.

Bibliotheca Malabarica: Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg's Tamil Library. Edited and translated by WILL Sweetman with R. ILAKKUVAN. Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient, Collection Indologie 119. Pondi-cherry: INSTITUT FRANCAIS DE PONDICHERY and ECOLE FRANCAISE D'EXTREME-ORIENT, 2012. Pp. 153. 17 [euro].

Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, Pietist Lutheran missionary educated at Halle and commissioned by the Danish king, arrived at the Danish enclave of Tranquebar (Tarangambadi), South India, in July of 1706, and shortly set about learning Tamil. His daily regimen was to begin the day, at seven, with an hour going over new words and phrases written down by his scribe from the previous day's study; then, till noon, reading works new to himself in the presence of an "old poet," a seventy-year-old schoolmaster, who explained them; from three to five in the afternoon, reading the works of individual authors; and after dark, from six thirty to eight, having read to him, "often a hundred times," works of authors whose style he admired and sought to imitate. Assiduously collecting Tamil manuscripts, two years later he had a substantial library and wrote an account in German of Tamil literature, the Bibliotheca Malabarica, and had written three short works in Tamil in addition to letters and sermons.

In this volume Will Sweetman translates and annotates the section of the Bibliotheca Malabarica that deals with Hindu and Iain works, 119 in all (other sections cover Protestant, Catholic, and Muslim works). It is a valuable contribution to the body of works on Tamil manuscripts and libraries, of which there remains so much more to know. He is modest about its contribution, as Ziegenbalg's library had no works of the Sangam period, and lacked many medieval works of central importance. It was far from representative. But every bit of knowledge about the availability of particular works at a particular time is a gain.

Ziegenbalg went on to write other works in German explaining Hinduism to Europeans, notably Malabarisches Heidenthum (1711) and Genealogia der malabarischen Gotter (1713), and, in Tamil, works of apologetics and a translation of the Bible, unfinished at his death in 1719, revised (and superseded) by the translation of Johannes Fabricius.

The prevailing European classification of religions at the time was Bible-centered and had four categories at varying distances from sacred scripture: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and heathenism. Hinduism fell into the last category of heathenism, for Ziegenbalg and for other Europeans of his time. But as Sweetman shows, while he arrived in South India with a strong presentiment that he would encounter barbarism, he was pleasantly surprised to find very quickly that the Tamils were intelligent and rational people, a view strongly reinforced as he learned to read their writings. When at last I was entirely able to read their own books, and became aware that the very 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, (pp. 4-5)

It is his exploration of Malabar heathenism that most attracts Sweetman to this early text, more than its value in reconstructing the history of Tamil literature. Even on that matter existing assessments vary widely, from highly positive (Kamil Zvelebil) to minimizing (Hans-Werner Genischen). The problem is that "scholars of Tamil literature have for the most part been relatively uninterested in Ziegenbalg's pioneering efforts, and historians of missions have lacked sufficient knowledge of Tamil literature to make an accurate assessment of them" (p. 2). The difficulty of truly coming to terms with pioneer texts of this kind will be evident, and Sweetman's solution is to collaborate with R. Ilakkuvan, a scholar of classical Tamil.

The steady tendency of this fine, short but essential work is to show in great detail the universe of Tamil works upon which Ziegenbalg drew in his later, major expositions of Hinduism in South India for European readers. The real project of the book is to continue the examination of Ziegenbalg's growing knowledge and appreciation of Hinduism. On the way we also get a valuable increment of knowledge about the history of Tamil literature.

THOMAS R. TRAUTMANN

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN