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Religious Language Use in Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa

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Religious Language Use in Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa Nidān, Volume 4, No. 1, July 2019, pp. 104-123 ISSN 2414-8636 Simão Gomes S.J. and God’s Human Avatāra: Religious language use in Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa Pär Eliasson Uppsala University [email protected] Abstract Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa, written in Marathi by the Portuguese Jesuit Simão Gomes in the early 18th century, is a philosophical text, presenting and arguing for Christianity and arguing against various Hindu ideas. The text is unusual in the rich early modern Christian Marathi/Konkani literature as it was written after its 17th century peak, in Devanagari (as opposed to Roman) script, and outside the Portuguese territory of Goa in Marathi speaking Deccan. It shares some features with one particular manuscript of Thomas Stephens’ Kristapurāṇa, suggesting that Gomes’ intervention is part of the reason for some peculiarities of that better-known work. The aim of this paper is to analyse the use of Christological terminology in Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa. I will identify probable sources of inspiration for using particular words, similes and imagery, for example Hindu sources that are recorded to have been known by Jesuits in Goa in the 17th century. I will also try to identify principles for choosing certain terms instead of others, principles that could explain for example the reference to the Holy Spirit as spīrītu sāṁtu although almost all other words for God, the Trinity and the intricacies of the doctrines of Christology are of Sanskrit origin. Keywords: Marathi, Christianity, literature, Portuguese, Konkani Introduction: Gomes in context The Portuguese Jesuit Simão Gomes was an ingenious Christian author, writing in a foreign language in a foreign land, both of which he had made his own. He was playing the language games of the land, learning local strategies and using them along with moves he had learnt from his European Christian background. He entered into Indian religious discourses and gave them a new twist. In order to communicate his message in an adequate way, he drew on both European/Christian and Indian/Hindu1 ideas and sources. The aim of this paper is to analyse Gomes’ use of 1 Using “Hinduism” as an analytic concept can be problematic for various reasons (cf. Sweetman, 2018). Nevertheless, I find the term useful for denoting a number of Indian religious systems and phenomena that, although very different and often polemic toward each other, share family resemblences and to a high degree a common reference system. More specific terms (“Advaita”, “Vaṣṇavism” etc.) risk narrowing the view unduly, whereas alternatives like “Indian religion” and “native religion” can give the impression that Christianity, although present in South India since at least the third century C.E. (Frykenberg, 2008: 115), is a foreign element. Terms used by early modern Catholic missionaries – like gentilismo (de la Croix, 1634: 4), “the law of the gentiles” (“alei dos Jentios”) (Anon. 1559) and “Konkanhood” (“cõcannapanna”) (Esteuão, 1945 [1622]: 32) – are 104 Eliasson / Simão Gomes S.J. and God’s Human Avatāra the Marathi language for communicating ideas about God in his Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa, written in the early 18th century. The outlines of Gomes’ life are summarised by his confrère Joseph Wicki in a letter from Rome to the Goan historian and language scholar A. K. Priyoḷakara in 1964: From the catalogs of our Archives (Goa 25 and Goa 26 of ARSJ) I was able to secure the key biographical data. He was born in Vermelha (District of Cadaval, Portugal) about 1647. He joined the Jesuit Order in Goa on June 9, 1661; he made the usual philosophical and theological studies. In 1680 he made his solemn religious profession. He taught Latin Grammar for two years; twice he was busy as a missionary in Maisur and once he was Vicerector in Diu. He was the Parish priest for considerable time in Salsette near Goa. In 1709 he founded a new mission in Deccan. He mastered the language of Salsette, in which he also made a successful examination. He was a tall man. He died in Rachol on August 26, 1722 (Hist. Soc. 51, f. 322). […] Extant are two short letters of his of the year 1708, which show the status of the mission of Dessu (Priyoḷakara and Prabhudesāī, 1994: 10–11). Dessu usually refers to the Marathi speaking part of Deccan, in modern anglicised spelling written Desh. The exact location of Gomes mission is not known, but according to Priyoḷakara it was probably around Belgaum in what is now Karnataka (Priyoḷakara and Prabhudesāī, 1994:3). Sureśa Āmoṇakāra suggests that it could be the village Desur near Kanapur in Belgaum district (Āmoṇakāra, 2017: 84). Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa, found in the Marsden collection in London, is written in Devanagari script, which maybe indicates that it was not written in Goa, where Christian texts were usually written in Roman script (Priyoḷakara and Prabhudesāī, 1994: 1–2). The language is Marathi with traces of Konkani, perhaps a remnant from Gomes’ years in Goa. Gomes creative use of Indic words and “translation” of Biblical names as exemplified below, as well as his use of similes and comparisons taken from Hindu contexts, indicate that he was a man with a free mind. Maybe the fact that he was working outside the Portuguese territory made him feel freer to drape the messages in whatever words and images he deemed fitting without worrying too much about authorities. Working outside the Portuguese territories was perhaps also a reason for using a more Sanskritised/Marathified style (Āmoṇakāra, 2017: 85). Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa begins with an introduction, giving a brief ontological outline of everything that is. The introduction is followed by six main parts (bhāga), subdivided into subchapters (teja). The first part is about God, including discussions about the soul and false gods. The second part continues with God’s deeds. The third part is about the incarnation and the fourth about the passion of Jesus Christ. The fifth part is about the resurrection and the Church, whereas the sixth and last part treats the last judgement. The manuscript contains, apart from Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa, an appendix containing the apostolic creed and various prayers, both dated and vague. In this article, I will use “Hinduism” for referring to Indian religious systems and phenomena, excluding Christianity and Islam as well as religions like Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism with South Asian origin. 105 Nidān, Volume 4, No. 1, July 2019, pp. 104-123 ISSN 2414-8636 special prayers for some major feasts and a sort of catechism in question-answer form. In this article, I am providing references to the edition of Priyoḷakara and Prabhudesāī (Gomes, 1994) for the main text, and to the Marsden manuscript (Gomes, 18th c.) for the appendix, which is not included in the former. English Bible quotes are taken from NRSVCE (Bible 1993). All other translations are my own, except otherwise stated. Apart from its originality, Sarveśvarācā Gnāna Upadeśa is interesting because of its special relations to two of the most ingenious Jesuit missionaries in India in early modern times, namely Thomas Stephens (1549-1619) in Goa and Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) in South India. The title is similar to that of de Nobili’s Ñāna Upadēsam in Tamil, and although the latter is a much larger work, they are both prose treatises about the Christian religion composed in a manner different from the more standardized cathechisms that were written in various Indian languages following European models (Nardini, 2017: 230–232). Gomes uses the same vocabulary and the same Devanagari script that distinguishes the so-called Marsden version of Thomas Stephens’ Kristapurāṇa from other available manuscripts. Some of these Sanskrit-based words are also used by de Nobili. Examples are gnyānasnāna for baptism (Gomes, 18th c.: 7, 47, 92, 93, 147; Gomes, 1994: 17, 44, 77),2 Sṇābaga Krupājī/-nātha for John the Baptist (Gomes, 18th c.: 93, 147; Gomes, 1994: 77), and Veda for the Bible (Gomes, 1994: 115). What does this mean? Although it seems safe to suppose that de Nobili was influenced by his senior Stephens (Nardini, 2017: 233), part of the similarity may be due to Gomes’ intervention in Stephens’ text, as Priyoḷakara has suggested (Āmoṇakāra, 2017: 83). As already mentioned, the vocabulary and script of the Kristapurāṇa manuscript of the Marsden collection differs from available manuscripts in Roman script. A plausible explanation for this is that the Marsden copy of the Kristapurāṇa was written by Gomes, who allowed himself to make minor changes in it. This hypothesis is strengthened by a verse where the Marsden Kristapurāṇa says that few people on “this island” (i.e. India) has recognized the true saviour in the last 1712 years, corresponding well to the time when Gomes would have layed his hand on Stephens epic (Stephens, 1712: v. 40.141; Stephens, 2009: v. II.40.141). Other manuscripts in the corresponding verse say 1600 years (Stephens, n.d.: v. 2.41.141; Stephens, 1907: v. 2.41.141; Stephens, 1996: v. 2.41.141), which corresponds well to the time when Stephens wrote the original work. Meaning and use Part of the theoretical bases for the study is Saussure’s structuralistic theory of language (de Saussure, 1983). There a word (signe) is analysed as consisting of a sound pattern (signifiant) and the concept (signifié) it represents. The relation between sound pattern and concept is arbitrary, so that any sound pattern can stand for any concept. This means that it is principally possible to let a certain word mean something else than it did before, or to denote a certain concept with a new 2 gnyānasnāna reminds of similar concepts in Vārkari literature. Bahiṇābāī wrote about “jñānagaṁge snāna”, i.e.
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