DOCSLIB.ORG

Missionaries from Switzerland: the Basel Mission in South India

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Missionaries from Switzerland: the Basel Mission in South India Chapter 9 Missionaries from Switzerland: The Basel Mission in South India 1 A Minister Honoured A special tribute was paid to the missionary Ferdinand Kittel (1832–1903) in 2001: a life-size bronze statue of him was unveiled on the Mahatma Gandhi Road, the main street of the city of Bengaluru (Bangalore). He is portrayed in full regalia, dressed in European minister’s robes, with his hand on the Bible on the table next to him. But he was not being honoured as a preacher of the bibli- cal message. The text on the pedestal draws primary attention to his services in the area of linguistics: he published classic Kannada literature, wrote an epic on Jesus Christ in that language and compiled a comprehensive Kannada- English dictionary that was considered to be “a perennial contribution to Kan- nada literature.” It is remarkable that a statue was erected for a European in a period in which Indians were more inclined to remove monuments of the colonial period. Fer- dinand Kittel, however, did not play any role in British colonial policy, and, moreover, he was and is honoured not because of his activities as a missionary but because of his major contribution to the Indian cultural heritage. Thus, his statue played a role in the reinforcement of the sense of identity of the Karna- taka state. Its own language, Kannada, is what binds the state together. It is remarkable that shortly before the statue was unveiled, Kittel’s name became associated with one of the suburbs of the city: Austin Town, named after a Brit- ish colonial administrator, became F. Kittel Nagar. 2 On the Road in a Mission Field Georg Ferdinand Kittel was born in the parsonage of the small East Frisian vil- lage of Resterhafe on 7 April 1848.1 Not only was his father a minister, but two of his brothers would also choose that profession while Ferdinand and two other brothers became missionaries. Ferdinand was admitted to the educa- tional institute of the Basel Mission at the age of 18. Many south German young 1 See accounts of his life in Wendt 2006; Wendt 2008. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/97890044�0076_011 <UN> 148 Chapter 9 Figure 14 The statue of Ferdinand Kittel in Bengaluru, decorated for Karnataka State Formation Day 2017 men from Württemburg continued their studies in the Swiss city of Basel, and the transition from the isolated coastal village in the extreme north of Germa- ny to Basel was certainly a major one. The Basel Mission was founded in 1815 within the circles of the pietistic revival movements that arose in that time.2 2 For the history of the Basel Mission, see Christ-von Wedel and Kuhn 2015; Binder 2006a. <UN>.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • II PUC English Mock Paper II
    JAIN COLLEGE 463/465, 18th Main Road, SS Royal, 80 Feet Road Rajarajeshwari Nagar, Bangalore - 560 098 SUBJECT: ENGLISH II PUC MOCK - II Timings Allowed: 3 Hrs 15 Minutes Total Marks: 100 Instructions: a. Follow the prescribed limit while answering the questions. b. Write the correct question number as it appears on the question paper. c. One mark questions attempted more than once will be awarded zero. d. For multiple choice questions choose the correct answer and rewrite it. I. Answer the following in a word, a phrase or a sentence each: 12X1=12 1. Who according to Juliet would make the face of heaven so fine? 2. Mention one of the reasons as to why death sentence was altered to life imprisonment? 3. Name the author of ‘Tapovan’ as mentioned in ‘Everything I need to know I learned in the forest’ 4. Who had occupied Gonzalo’s usual bench in the park? 5. When does the poet want his lady love to read the book of his poems in “when you are old”? 6. Where according to the speaker of ‘On Children’ do the souls of children dwell? 7. When, according to the narrator, does man lose his name in’ The Gardener’? 8. When, according to Borges, would history and man disappear? 9. Name the village that was burnt to ashes for want of water. 10. What does the child’s foot like to be in the poem? 11. What was Rufus Okeke called as in ‘The Voter’? 12. Which movement helped the ‘neo-literate’ to become ‘neo-cyclist’? II.
    [Show full text]
  • Proposal to Encode Archaic Vowel Signs O OO for Kannada Shriramana Sharma, Jamadagni-At-Gmail-Dot-Com, India 2013-Dec-31
    L2/14-004 Proposal to encode archaic vowel signs O OO for Kannada Shriramana Sharma, jamadagni-at-gmail-dot-com, India 2013-Dec-31 §1. Thanks I thank Srinidhi of Tumkur, Karnataka, for alerting me to these old vowel signs used in Kannada and for providing the attestations, thus leading to this proposal. §2. Introduction The Kannada encoding currently has the following vowel signs for short ŏ and long ō: 0CCA ◌ೊ KANNADA VOWEL SIGN O 0CCB ◌ೋ KANNADA VOWEL SIGN OO This is a proposal to encode two more vowel signs denoting the same short ŏ and long ō but consistently different in shape: 0CBA ◌ KANNADA VOWEL SIGN ARCHAIC O 0CBB ◌ KANNADA VOWEL SIGN ARCHAIC OO As shown below, these were found in archaic use and must be encoded for the textual representation of those earlier writings. §3. Discussion In L2/14-005* I have discussed the two systems followed in the Telugu and Kannada scripts as regards the vowel signs for O and OO. While the Kannada script currently employs a two- part vowel sign ◌ೆ + ◌ೂ = ◌ೊ for indicating O, earlier Kannada writings and printings have used a single-part vowel sign for O. In both cases, the length mark ◌ೕ is added for OO. To elucidate this: in the old style, for KA ಕ, kŏ was written as , i.e. using a single- part vowel sign ◌. kō with the long vowel was written as . Attestations for this older usage follow. * … which I submit as a separate document since its scope also includes Telugu and since it is of the nature of a technical note discussing the two systems, various alternate notations etc in detail.
    [Show full text]
  • The Influence of Jainism on Early Kannada Literature Sheldon Pollock’S Work Language of Gods
    International Journal of Jaina Studies (Online) Vol. 15, No. 2 (2019) 1-24 THE INFLUENCE OF JAINISM ON EARLY KANNADA LITERATURE SHELDON POLLOCK’S WORK LANGUAGE OF GODS Hampa Nagarajaiah (Hampana) Preamble Kannada, a Dravidian language, is one of the ancient and important literary languages in India. It has a script of its own and has a population of about sixty million. It had branched off from the Proto-Dravidian Family of languages in around sixth century BC, and had become a written language by the beginning of current era. The history of Kannada language and literature is very vast, varied and encompasses a variety of genres. Regrettably, its salient features were not properly and systematically introduced outside the Kannada world. Such an objective account remained a desideratum for a long time. To address the issue some attempts were made by Ferdinand Kittel (1832-1903), E.P. Rice (1849-1936) and B.L. Rice (1837-1927). B.L. Rice (1898) was the first to edit the epic Vikramārjunavijaya of poet Pampa (901-950), and write an article in English about the epic, as early as in 1882. His brother, E.P. Rice (1921) wrote The Kanarese Literature, the earliest book in English on the Kannada Literature. He wrote in the concluding paragraphs: “I am afraid it must be confessed that Kanarese writers, highly skilful though they are in the manipulation of their language, and very pleasing to listen to in the original, have as yet contributed extremely little to the stock of the world’s knowledge and inspiration [...]. There is little of original and imperishable thought on the question of perennial interest to man [...].
    [Show full text]
  • The Unification Movement in Karnataka: Twin Logics of Cultural
    The Unification Movement in Karnataka : Twin Logics of Cultural and Economic Consolidation Manu Devadevan Veena Naregal Samraj Sahay Title: The Unification Movement in Karnataka : Twin Logics of Cultural and Economic Consolidation. Author(s) Manu Devadevan, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Mandi. Veena Naregal, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Abstract The significant work on regional identities that emerged around the new standard vernacular forms in the 19th century has shown how these had offered possibilities of subsuming sectarian and hierarchical markers of belonging such as caste, religion. As imperatives towards territorial reorganization gained momentum in the years after the Bengal Partition and its revocation in 1912, these radical possibilities around the new form of the regional languages were rapidly transformed as possibilities of territorial reorganization, now imagined around the hitherto unprecedented notion of linguistic boundaries. Thus even as possibilities of linguistic mobilisation were bolstered through the enunciation of core democratic values positing that governance must be in a language intelligible to the majority, the mapping of territorial reorganization around linguistic boundaries and the ensuing production of linguistic regions set in motion a twinning of cultural and economic energies logics and processes unprecedented ways. This paper is an effort to explore the twinning of the logic of cultural and economic consolida- tion in the unification of a Karnataka as a linguistic, cultural, territorial entity that was both politically and economically viable. In examining the twin logics of cultural and economic consolidation, we note how while the embracing of developmental agendas was prefaced by full, formal political acquiescence to the logic of linguistic territorialisa- tion, actual linguistic reorganization of states occurred in 1960, a whole decade after economic planning became the centre-piece of the national mission.
    [Show full text]
  • Kannada Language and Its Grammatical Tradition © 2017 IJKR Received: 13-05-2017 Nagaveni Accepted: 14-06-2017
    International Journal of Kannada Research 2017; 3(3): 75-77 ISSN: 2454–5813 IJKR 2017; 3(3): 75-77 Kannada language and its grammatical tradition © 2017 IJKR www.kannadajournal.com Received: 13-05-2017 Nagaveni Accepted: 14-06-2017 Nagaveni Kannada language and its Characteristics Research Scholar Kannada is the regional as well as official language of Karnataka state. The number of people Linguistic Department speaking Kannada is about 4.5 crores and at least 1.1 crore of people have Kannada as their Kuvempu Institute of Kannada second language. It is generally estimated that the number of people who speak Kannada is Studies Manasa Gangothri Mysore, India about 7 crores and this estimation has been very popular taking into consideration of the language spoken by Kannada people settled at various places elsewhere in the world [1]. Kannada has been accorded the status of a classical language by the Government of India, because of its antiquity and richness of linguistic and literary credentials. There are at least about twenty dialects in Kannada and Kannada language is vividly spoken in different ways in different parts of Karnataka. Kannada happens to be a distinguished language enjoying several special features. Some of the specialties of the language could be highlighted here : 1. Next to Sanskrit and Tamil, Kannada is the oldest language in India. 2. Like many other languages of India, Kannada is also written as it is spoken and spoken as it is written. It is phonetic in nature. 3. Sri Vinoba Bhave, a distinguished national leader and a language and literature specialist had wholeheartedly extolled that Kannada script is the queen of world scripts.
    [Show full text]
  • Aesthetics of Sovereignty: the Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism Sarah Pierce Taylor University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian Studies Commons, Comparative Literature Commons, Religion Commons, and the South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Taylor, Sarah Pierce, "Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2052. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2052 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2052 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Aesthetics of Sovereignty: The Poetic and Material Worlds of Medieval Jainism Abstract "Aesthetics of Sovereignty" explores how premodern religious communities employed narrative as a site to imagine ideal political worlds in ways that exceeded the capacity of formal philosophical and politico- theoretical discourse. Taking the Digambara Jain community of the ninth and tenth-century western Deccan as my primary focus, I argue that Jains theorized, modeled, and continually revised what it meant to be both a king and a Jain through literary and material improvisations with the narrative of the first Tīrthaṅkara Ādinātha (a genre known as the Ādipurāṇa). From the proposition that worldly sovereignty culminates in renunciation in Jinasēna’s Ādipurāṇa (c. 860 C.E.) and the devolution of courtly erotic love into devotional affect in Pampa’s Ādipurāṇaṃ (941 C.E.), to the vision of an ideal king as Jain devotee in the Cāvuṇḍarāya Purāṇaṃ (978 C.E.), my dissertation tracks shifting Jain experiments with language, genre, and artistic mediums that reflect broader attempts to imagine ideal worlds structured around perfected notions of worldly and spiritual sovereignty.
    [Show full text]
  • Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission In
    Documents on the Basel Mission in North Karnataka, Page 6. 1 Missions-Magazin 1850-1852: Translations P. & J.M. Jenkins, October 2007, revised July 2013 Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission in Northern Karnataka 1837-1852 Section Six: [1849-]1850-1852 BM Annual Report [1849-] 1850 pp.6.1-16 From Kies' Travel diary July-Dec. 1849 pp. 6.15-17 B M Annual Report [1850-] 1851 pp. 6.17-43 From Kies' Travel report Sep.-Dec. 1850 pp. 6.39-41 BM Annual Report [1851-] 1852 pp. 6.44-58 Including the first annual report from Guleddgudd, G. Kies, pp. 6.55-8 Documents on the Basel Mission in North Karnataka, Page 6. 2 Missions-Magazin 1850-1852: Translations P. & J.M. Jenkins, October 2007, revised July 2013 Basel Mission Annual Report 1849-501 Translators' note: In this set of translations, some material has been included that is not from North Karnataka. It was 34 years since the founding of the Mission College [Seminary] in Basel, and 14 years since the first missionaries had been sent to India (1835). The Mission was becoming a more complex organisation, but Basel still played a key role, not only in fund-raising and training but also in keeping a tight control of the missionaries in their various fields of work. There was still a strong feeling that the Mission was – or should be – "a family" albeit a rather patriarchal one. What happened in Basel had implications for the people working in distant India, so we begin with a short summary of the report on what was happening in the Headquarters in Basel.
    [Show full text]
  • Kannada from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
    Kannada From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Kannada /ˈkaːnədə/[7][8] ( kannaḍa, IPA: [ˈkʌnːəɖɑː]) or Canarese/Kanarese /kænəˈriːz/,[9] is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Kannada people in the South Indian state of Kannada Karnataka, and by linguistic minorities in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala, and Goa. With roughly 40 million native speakers,[10] who are called Kannadigas (Kannaḍigaru), Kannada ranks 33rd in the list of most spoken languages in the world. It is one of the scheduled languages of India and the official and administrative language of the state of Karnataka.[11] Pronunciation [ˈkʌnnəɖɑː] Native to India The Kannada language is written using the Kannada script, which evolved from the 5th-century Kadamba script. Kannada is attested epigraphically for about one and a half millennia, and Region Karnataka and Goa, with border communities in neighboring states literary Old Kannada flourished in the 6th-century Ganga dynasty[12] and during the 9th-century Ethnicity Kannadiga Rashtrakuta Dynasty.[13][14] Kannada has an unbroken literary history of over a thousand 38 million (2007)[1] years.[15] Native speakers 11 million as a second language (2001 census)[2] Based on the recommendations of the Committee of Linguistic Experts, appointed by the Ministry Language Dravidian of Culture, the Government of India designated Kannada a classical language of India.[16][17][18] In family July 2011, a center for the study of classical Kannada was established as part of the Central Southern
    [Show full text]
  • Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission In
    Documents on the Basel Mission in North Karnataka, Introduction Page 1 Missions-Magazin 1837-52 Intro: Translations P. & J.M. Jenkins, October 2007 Revised July 2013 Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission in North Karnataka 1837-1852 Translations and summaries from published materials in German by Jennifer and Paul Jenkins Provisional Edition, November 2007 Revised July 2013, and including two contemporary drawings of mission stations and their surroundings These translations are freely available to interested scholars and institutional libraries, in duplicated or digital form. Jennifer & Paul Jenkins Largitzenstrasse 19 CH 4056 Basel Switzerland [email protected] [email protected] [Also see <http://www.library.yale.edu/div/fa/Karnataka.htm>] Documents on the Basel Mission in North Karnataka, Introduction Page 2 Missions-Magazin 1837-52 Intro: Translations P. & J.M. Jenkins, October 2007 Revised July 2013 Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission in Northern Karnataka, 1837-1852 List of Sections Each Section is a separate .pdf document Section 0 (Introduction) follows immediately here Section 1: 1837-1839 pp.1.1-54 Section 2: 1840-41 pp.2.1-34 Section 3: 1842 pp.3.1-40 Section 4: [1842-]1845 pp.4.1-49 Section 5: [1845-]1849 pp. 5.1-51 Section 6: [1849-]1852 pp.6.1-58 Section 7: detailed sketches of two mission stations: Betgeri and Malasamudra and their surroundings 1846, 1847. Documents on the Basel Mission in North Karnataka, Introduction Page 3 Missions-Magazin 1837-52 Intro: Translations P. & J.M. Jenkins, October 2007 Revised July 2013 Journeys and Encounters Religion, Society and the Basel Mission in Northern Karnataka, 1837-1852 Introduction: Contents The Basel Mission and its major quarterly Missions-Magazin pp.4-5 Selection and Emphasis: Encounters with Lingayats pp.5-7 Translation from another time and another culture pp.7-8 Matters of Fact – Translation and Transliteration pp.
    [Show full text]