! 
 
tihvaxy of €he Cheolojicd ^tminary 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Delavan L, Pisrson 
 
 BV 3265 .R5313 1908 
 Richter, Julius, 1862-1940 
 A history of missions in 
 India 
 
A HISTORY OF MISSIONS IN INDIA 
 
"I believe, notwithstanding all that the English 
 people have done to benefit that country (India), 
 the missionaries have done more than all other 
 agencies combined." 
 
 Lord Lawrence. 
 
#^-^ 
 
 /3_ 
 
 A HISTORY ''''\ 
 
 OF 
 
 MISSIONS IN INDIA 
 
 JULIUS RICHTER, D.D. 
 
 PFARRER OF SCHWANEBECK 
 
 EDITOR OF " DIE EVANGELISCHEN MISSIONEN " 
 
 AUTHOR OF " NORDINDISCHE MISSIONSFAHRTEN " " UGANDA' 
 
 "DEUTSCHE MISSION IN SUD INDIEN " ETC. ETC. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 SYDNEY H. MOORE 
 
 MASTER IN THE SCHOOL FOR SONS OF MISSIONARIES 
 BLACKHEATH 
 
 IF/TH COLOURED MAP BY BARTHOLOMEW 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 
 1908 
 
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE 
 
 It were a churl's part not to give thanks where such are due, 
 and in sending forth this version of Richter's Indische Missions- 
 gesckichte, the translator desires to express sincere gratitude for 
 much labour, helpful counsel, and kindly assistance rendered by 
 Miss E. I. M. Boyd, of Cambridge ; by Rev. J. H. Oldham, M. A., 
 of Edinburgh ; by Fraulein Gertrud Ludewig, of Jena ; and by 
 the genial author himself, Dr. Julius Richter. Considerable 
 erudite help has also been received whilst the book has been 
 going through the press, at the hands of Dr. Datta, of Lahore. 
 In the case of Rev, J. H. Oldham special acknowledgment is 
 due, as the first thirty-seven pages were translated by him. It 
 will be seen to how many sources any excellences that may 
 here be found are traceable ; for any faults the undersigned 
 alone is responsible. 
 
 It would be presumption for one filling so subordinate a role 
 as that of translator, to seek to prefix any formal dedication to 
 his work. Yet if the names of the good, when invoked upon the 
 enterprises of olden time, were held to render successful those 
 about to venture forth to unknown fields, let it be permitted 
 that in connection with this modest enterprise there be associated 
 the names of the indomitable, the brave, the fearless, and the 
 good — the names of my father and my mother. 
 
 SYDNEY H. MOORE. 
 Welling, August 1908. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 1. The Land ...... 
 
 2. The People ..... 
 
 3. Religion and Caste .... 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 EARLY MISSIONS 
 
 1. Before the Landing of the Portuguese 
 
 {a) Earliest Times 
 
 {d) The First Missionaries from Rome . 
 
 2. From the Landing of the Portuguese to the Advent of 
 
 Protestant Missions ..... 
 
 («) 1498-1542 
 
 (d) Francisco Xavier ..... 
 
 (c) The Second Half of the Sixteenth Century . 
 
 (d) Robert de Nobili ..... 
 
 (e) Other Roman Catholic Missions during the Sixteenth 
 
 Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries . 
 {/) The Struggles of the Syrian Church in Malabar, and thi 
 
 Victory of the Romish Church . 
 ig) The Schism in the Syrian Church, and the subsequent 
 
 Development of the separated Churches 
 {/i) The Decline of Roman Catholic Missions 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE DANISH MISSION 
 
 1. The Historical Background ..... 
 
 2. Early Years (i 706-1 720) ..... 
 
 3. Further Development (1720-1798) .... 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 
 DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 1. The Age of William Carey . 
 
 (fl) The Dawn of Modern Missions in India 
 (3) The Serampore Trio . 
 
 (c) Other Pioneers 
 
 (d) The Fight for the Charter of 18 13 . 
 (<?) 1813-1853— The Advent of the Great Missionary Societit 
 (/) Last Years of the Danish Mission (1800-1840) 
 
 2. The Age of Alexander Duff ..... 
 
 {a) Alexander Duff and his Work 
 
 (d) The Patronage of Heathenism— Lord William Bentinck 
 
 Reforms ....... 
 
 {c) The Advent of German and American Missionaries— The 
 
 Opening up of the Punjab (1833-1857) . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 6 
 17 
 
 96 
 102 
 no 
 
 128 
 128 
 132 
 
 143 
 149 
 
 153 
 161 
 
 173 
 173 
 
 1S5 
 192 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 3. From the Mutiny to the Proclamation of the Empire 
 
 (1857-1877) 
 
 {a) The Mutiny ...... 
 
 {d) Neutrality or Christianity : The Controversy at Home 
 (c) After the Mutiny (1857-1879) 
 
 4. Missions in India To-day (from 1880) 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 
 
 1. The Anglican Episcopate 
 
 2. Vernacular Preaching . 
 
 3. Literary Work . 
 
 (a) Bible Translation 
 (d) Other Literature 
 
 4. The Mission School 
 
 5. Other Missionary Work among the Educated Classes 
 
 6. Women's Work for Women .... 
 
 (a) Its Origin (down to 1854) 
 
 {i) The Change in Public Opinion (1S54-1S80) 
 
 (<r) Golden Harvest (from 1880) . 
 
 7. Medical Missions ..... 
 
 8. Missions to Lepers ..... 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LEAVEN AT WORK 
 
 1. The Brahmo Samaj ..... 
 
 2. Will o' the Wisps ..... 
 
 3. Efforts towards a Revival of Hinduism . 
 
 4. Corresponding Movements in Indian Muhammadanism 
 
 202 
 202 
 207 
 209 
 219 
 
 I. Animistic Religions 
 
 . 241 
 
 2. Popular Hinduism 
 
 • 249 
 
 3. The Brahmans .... 
 
 . 252 
 
 4. Caste ..... 
 
 . 255 
 
 5. Pantheism .... 
 
 . 262 
 
 273 
 280 
 
 285 
 287 
 
 294 
 307 
 323 
 329 
 
 333 
 337 
 341 
 346 
 355 
 
 367 
 378 
 389 
 400 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS— THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH OF INDIA 
 
 I. Numerical Success ....... 406 
 
 2. The Component Elements of a Protestant Native Church 
 
 3. Native Agents ....... 
 
 4. The Building up of the Christian Church of India 
 
 Appendix ........ 
 
 Index ..,..,,, 
 
 409 
 420 
 427 
 
 437 
 451 
 
HISTORY OF MISSIONS 
 IN INDIA 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I. The Land 
 
 When we speak of India in the following pages we mean 
 the Anglo-Indian Empire, including the more or less dependent 
 vassal states and the insignificant possessions of other European 
 powers, but not as a rule Burma and Ceylon. The ethnographic 
 conditions of Burma are considerably different from those of 
 India, and Ceylon has had a peculiar historical development. 
 Both of these would therefore require to be treated separately. 
 
 India, in this narrower sense, is a country enclosed on all 
 sides by clearly marked boundaries. It is bounded on the 
 north by the Himalayas, on the north-west by the Sulaiman 
 Mountains, on the east and the west by the Bay of Bengal 
 and the Arabian Sea. These boundaries form at the same time 
 the natural defences of India. On the north the mighty range 
 of the Himalayas, "the Abode of Snow," is a local and racial 
 barrier of unique importance. The Sulaiman Mountains on the 
 north-west descend to a lower altitude, but in front of them 
 there stretch the dreary sandy and rock wastes of Baluchistan, 
 impeding the progress of any marauding conqueror. The broad 
 gap between the main range of the Himalayas in the east and 
 the Bay of Bengal is filled with numerous mountain chains 
 stretching north and south which are covered with dense track- 
 less primeval forests. The east coast of India from Balasore 
 in the north to Cape Comorin affords no suitable landing-place, 
 but only flat sandbanks and a pitiless surf, which makes all 
 approach dangerous. And although the west coast has better 
 harbours and offers an inducement to shipping by its peculiar 
 network of lagoons, the so-called " backwaters," a few miles 
 behind the coast there rises along the whole length from north 
 I 
 
2 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 to south the steep, almost inaccessible chain of the Western 
 Ghats as an obstacle to the invasion of the Deccan, India, 
 thus wonderfully protected by its natural defences, has only 
 two points containing elements of weakness. The less dangerous 
 is in the north-east, where the mighty Brahmaputra forces its 
 way through the mountain wilds of the Eastern Himalayas, and 
 in the torrid alluvial valleys of Upper Assam offers itself as 
 a doorway into the inner highlands of Asia. The more serious 
 weak spot lies in the north-west, between the Himalaya and the 
 Sulaiman ranges, where the Indus and the Kabul rivers have 
 forced a broad passage through the irregular tangle of mountain 
 masses, while in the north the fertile oases of the Amu Daria and 
 Syr Daria secure for even the largest army an easy access from 
 Khorasan and Eastern Turkistan to the gates of India. This 
 is the door of the nations into India through which since the 
 dawn of history hordes of conquerors have sought a path to 
 the treasures of the coveted land. 
 
 India thus circumscribed maybe compared to a rhomboid — 
 a rhomboid made up of two unequal triangles. This was 
 observed even by the early Greek geographers. Looking from 
 the south, we see before us the peninsula proper of India, the 
 Deccan, or South Land, one of the oldest geological formations 
 of Asia, a raised plateau overhung by irregular hilly peaks and 
 wooded ranges. On the west it slopes sharply down to the 
 coast, on the east it inclines gradually towards the Bay of 
 Bengal, and on the north it merges itself in the mountainous 
 country of the Vindhya and Satpura ranges, which is covered 
 with immense primeval forests and crossed in all directions by 
 irregular mountain spurs. North of this southern triangle there 
 stretches in its immensity the wide alluvial plain, of a later 
 geological formation, which fills the broad space between the 
 northern base of the Vindhya plateau and the southern edge 
 of the Himalayas. It is traversed by the mightiest rivers of 
 India, the Indus, the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra, the gracious 
 life-giving arteries of that land of heat. The blessings of the 
 Brahmaputra and the Indus are received only in part by 
 India. The upper reaches of the Brahmaputra He in the 
 mountainous wastes of inland Asia, and only its lower waters 
 fertilise the country. The Indus in its upper courses forces its 
 way with difficulty through the deep valleys of the Himalayas, 
 and in its lower reaches loses itself in the sandy wastes of the 
 wilderness of Sind, so that it is only in the middle of its course 
 that with the help of its five great tributaries it waters the 
 Punjab, "the Land," as its names implies, "of the Five Rivers." 
 The Ganges, on the other hand, early in its course enters the 
 plain of Hindustan, and traverses it with its numerous and 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 well-filled tributaries from Hardwar at the foot of the Himalayas 
 to its widely ramified delta in Lower Bengal. It is one of the 
 largest and most beneficent streams in the world, the creator of 
 the most fertile districts of India, and the vehicle of its commerce 
 and civilisation. It is not without reason that the grateful 
 dwellers on its banks regard it as the sacred river of India, and 
 celebrate it in numerous songs as the Source of Blessing and 
 Mother of Life. North of the plain of Hindustan India 
 penetrates — sometimes for great distances, sometimes less ex- 
 tensively — into the mountainous wilds of the Himalayas. In 
 Kashmir, Lower Tibet, Kumaon, Garhwal, Sikkim, and other 
 districts, it attains the very heart of these magnificent alpine 
 territories. The mountainous districts in the Himalayas must 
 be regarded not only as the northern boundary, but as a 
 separate third division of India proper. 
 
 India is divided by the tropic of Cancer approximately into 
 two equal parts, of which the southern lies in the tropics, and 
 the northern in the sub-tropical zone. The most northerly 
 mountain districts in the Himalayas, Dardistan and Chitral, 
 are in the same latitude as Crete and Malta. The climate of 
 India, in consequence of its southern position, is determined 
 chiefly by the monsoons, or trade winds, which blow with great 
 regularity. From the end of March onwards, when the sun in 
 its northward course is approaching the tropic of Cancer, the 
 vast area of India, through the more direct action of its rays, 
 becomes heated to a greater degree than the surrounding sea. 
 As a result of this excessive heating of the air there occurs an 
 upward atmospheric movement, and there is a barometrical 
 minimum all over India. Then cool winds from the icefields 
 of the South Pole begin to blow across the watery expanse of 
 the Indian Ocean in a north-westerly direction (corresponding 
 to the rotation of the Earth) towards the Equator, and (in 
 accordance with the same law) are diverted on the other side 
 of the Equator in a northerly direction. This current of air, 
 carrying with it mighty and limitless masses of moisture, is 
 irresistibly attracted by the barometrical depression which has 
 taken place in India, and is diverted in a north-easterly 
 direction. It discharges itself from the middle of June onwards 
 as the south-west monsoon over the parched and over-heated 
 areas of India, precipitating its moisture on the mountains in 
 deluges of rain. Meantime the sun has rounded the tropic of 
 Cancer and begun its return journey across the Equator in the 
 direction of the tropic of Capricorn. The area affected by its 
 rays is consequently changed, and its greatest heat is now 
 experienced far south of India over the Indian Ocean. As a 
 result of this a revolution takes place in the currents of air. 
 
4 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 The south-west monsoon, which had struck the west coast of 
 India and watered the country right up to the Himalayas, 
 diminishes in force. The parallel current of air and moisture 
 which had fertilised the coasts of Further India now turns in the 
 Bay of Bengal on its backward journey, seeking to reach the 
 new barometrical minimum in the south of the Indian Ocean, 
 and in its course strikes the south-east of India, and especially 
 the Madras Presidency, from October to December, as the 
 north-east monsoon, conveying in this indirect fashion to its 
 hot dried area a portion of its beneficent moisture. While the 
 general current of air is thus directed from north to south, 
 there stream towards India from the north and north-west, 
 from the south-east of Europe and the north-west of Asia, dry 
 cold winds which produce a general cooling and drying of the 
 land area. The main effect of this simple meteorological 
 process repeated with great regularity year by year is to give 
 a hot and a cool season, the former when the sun is north of 
 the Equator, the latter when it is south of it ; that is to say, 
 speaking in the most general terms, a summer from April to 
 October and a cool season during our winter. This distinction, 
 which is less marked in South India with regard to both seasons, 
 is essentially modified by the advent of the monsoon. The 
 south-west monsoon occasions in the area affected by it, which 
 is by far the greater part of India, a rainy season from June to 
 September. The north-east monsoon produces in the south-east 
 of India, i.e. in the Madras Presidency, a rainy season from the 
 middle of October to January. As a result the seasons are some- 
 what different in the different parts of India. The usual method 
 of reckoning is to speak of a rainy, a cool, and a hot season. 
 
 Like all tropical and sub-tropical countries, India is 
 dependent for its fertility in the first instance upon the rain- 
 fall. Where the land is regularly and adequately watered by 
 the monsoon rains it revels in the most luxuriant productivity 
 and is capable of supporting a numerous population. Where 
 the monsoon rains fall sparsely and only at long intervals, the 
 land becomes a wilderness. When they are unexpectedly 
 delayed, drought and famine threaten. The principal monsoon, 
 as we have seen, is that from the south-west. It strikes the 
 south-west coast of India, and since immediately behind this 
 there rises the lofty rampart of the Western Ghats, the low- 
 hanging clouds are compelled to discharge the first fulness of 
 their blessing on the strip of coast which forms the long and 
 narrow coast districts of Travancore, Cochin, Malabar, South 
 Kanara, and the Konkan. These blossom accordingly in an 
 almost inexhaustible productivity, and support an exceedingly 
 dense population. With an annual rainfall on the west coast 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 of 100 inches, there is a population of 390 to 520 to the square 
 mile.^ When the rain-clouds of the south-west monsoon have 
 crossed the barrier of the Ghats they are met by no serious 
 obstacle in the broad, gently undulating plateau of the Deccan, 
 and are not compelled to surrender to it much of their moisture. 
 The consequence is that the yearly rainfall sinks to under 
 30 inches, and consequently what would otherwise be a fruitful 
 country can only maintain a population of from 130 to 260 per 
 square mile. Nothing further exists to impede the course of 
 the monsoon until it encounters a final and insurmountable 
 obstacle in the soaring mountain range of the Himalayas. 
 Here all the remaining moisture is discharged as rain on 
 the broad plains lying at their base, or as snow upon 
 the extensive mountain slopes. This snow, which thaws 
 gradually throughout the whole year, is an unfailing source 
 of productivity to the plains ; and since the rain-clouds of the 
 south-west monsoon, when they have skirted the mountains of 
 Further India, discharge their moisture in Bengal and the 
 adjoining regions, we find here again districts with a large 
 rainfall and a corresponding density of population. Since the 
 south-west monsoon strikes the Himalayas along the region 
 opposite the United Provinces, and from there eastwards as far 
 as Assam, the greatest rainfall is found in the eastern districts, 
 and gradually decreases towards the west and north-west. 
 Assam has a yearly rainfall of 90.5 inches, while that of the 
 delta of Bengal is nearly 80 inches : this latter region supports 
 a population of 718 persons to the square mile; while in 
 separate districts, such as North Bihar, it reaches 830 to the 
 square mile. In the United Provinces, while the rainfall is only 
 47.2 inches, the population maintains an average of 638 to the 
 square mile. In Western Rajputana the rainfall sinks to 
 1 1 inches, and in British Baluchistan to 8 inches and less. 
 These districts have consequently only a population that 
 varies from 3 to 104 inhabitants per square mile. The density 
 of population in Bengal and the United Provinces, an 
 area about 2| times that of England, Scotland, and 
 Wales, is not very much less than in Great Britain (445 to 
 the square mile). Likewise the Madras Presidency, which 
 is by no means universally fertile, and which is more than 
 half as large as the German Empire, is on an average (with 
 42,500,000 inhabitants) populated half as thickly again as is 
 the Fatherland. We ought to admit that included in these 
 figures are such abnormally populated centres as e.g. a " taluq " 
 
 ^ The rainfall in Great Britain varies from about 22 inches in the midland 
 counties of England to about 44 inches on the west of Scotland. The average 
 density of the population in England and Wales is nearly 500 per square mile. 
 
6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 (district) in Cochin, which has as manj^ as 2500 inhabitants 
 per square mile (whereas even the industrial districts of 
 Saxony, one of the most thickly populated regions in Europe, 
 can only show 728 per square mile). And although, in spite 
 of this, the whole Empire of India, with an area of 1,766,597 
 square miles, has only 294,361,056 inhabitants, that is to say 
 on an average about 166 to the square mile, this is due to the 
 fact that the average is reduced by the very extensive but 
 thinly populated territories outside India proper, such as 
 Baluchistan, Chitral, Kashmir, and Burma. 
 
 It is strikingly characteristic of this vast teeming population 
 that as a whole it seems to have very little partiality for city 
 life. While in England a third, and in Germany a sixth of the 
 total population are crowded together in a very few cities of 
 over a hundred thousand inhabitants, India has only twenty- 
 nine such cities with an aggregate population of under 7,000,000, 
 or less than a fiftieth of the population. Only a tenth of the 
 population live in towns and villages which have more than 
 5000 inhabitants, the remaining nine-tenths preferring to be 
 scattered far and wide over the country in innumerable villages. 
 India is the land of villages. Intimately connected with this 
 fact is the other, that by far the greater part of the population 
 is dependent for its support upon agriculture and the pursuits 
 closely related thereto. Fifty-two per cent, of the population 
 are large or small landowners and tenants, while a further 
 twelve per cent, are day or farm labourers. 
 
 2. The People 
 
 India, including Ceylon, has upwards ot 297,000,000 inhabit- 
 ants, of whom 283,000,000 are in India proper, over 10,000,000 
 in Burma, 3,000,000 in Ceylon, and rather less than a million in 
 British Baluchistan. They include the most diverse races and 
 languages. When we attempt to form even the most general 
 conception regarding them we meet with unsolved problems 
 and questions to which the most different answers have been 
 given. The perplexity is increased by the fact that as the 
 result of recent investigation many of the views which hitherto 
 commanded general acceptance have been either exploded or 
 superseded. The whole of the south of India is occupied by a 
 population with long heads and broad noses, of medium height 
 and a dark complexion, which it has been the custom, following 
 the not wholly unimpeachable example of the Sanskrit litera- 
 ture, to call without further explanation Dravidians. To this 
 group, regarded from a linguistic standpoint, there belong 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 fourteen peoples or tribal stems, with an aggregate of over 
 56,000,000 persons: the Tamils numbering 16,500,000, the 
 Malayalams 6,000,000, the Telugus nearly 21,000,000, the 
 Kanarese 10,300,000, the Gonds 1,125,000, and the Oraons (who 
 speak Kurukh) 591,886. The less important languages and 
 dialects are Kandh (500,000), Tulu (535,210), Kodagu (Coorgi) 
 (39)190) Malto (spoken by the Pahari in the Rajmahal Hills) 
 (60,777), Brahui (in Baluchistan) (48,589), Toda, Kota, and 
 Malhar. The languages of these peoples are for the most 
 part closely related to one another, in some cases as closely 
 as the different Romance languages in South-Western Europe. 
 They are polysyllabic, agglutinative languages. The suffixes, 
 however, show a tendency to undergo alteration for reasons of 
 euphony,sometimes rejectingconsonants and sometimes changing 
 vowel sounds ; thus already showing an inclination towards in- 
 flection. But although the suffixes occasionally lose their 
 original form, they are still separable from the root, which on 
 its part is unchangeable. Only with reference to things living, 
 and even here but in a restricted degree, is a distinction made 
 between masculine and feminine genders ; everything which is 
 not living is neuter. One peculiarity is a double plural in the 
 first person, according as the person addressed is included or 
 excluded. The verb is without a passive mood, but on the 
 other hand there is a separate form of the verb to express 
 negation as distinct from affirmation. 
 
 Regarded even as a linguistic group, the Dravidians give 
 rise to great perplexity. What is the actual state of things, 
 for example, with regard to the Brahuis of Baluchistan ? They 
 obviously speak a Dravidian language, but they are so widely 
 separated from the other members of the same linguistic family 
 that a connecting link is sought for in vain. An attempt has 
 been made to regard the Brahuis as a proof that the Dravidians 
 in early times entered India from the north-west, the Brahuis 
 being supposed to have settled down midway in the course of 
 the migration. Unfortunately, the observations of anthro- 
 pologists are decisive against any such supposition. The 
 Brahuis have broad skulls (index 80 to 85), the Dravidians 
 long skulls (index 71 to T^)-^ the Brahuis have extraordinarily 
 long but narrow noses (index 68 to 80), while the Dravidians 
 are characteristically a broad-nosed race (index 74 to 95). 
 The Brahuis as a rule are tall (5 ft. 5 in.), the Dravidians under 
 medium height (5 ft. i in. to 5 ft. 4 in.). The Brahuis in their 
 physical characteristics are indistinguishable from the Turko- 
 Iranian type by which they are surrounded. How they obtain 
 their Dravidian language no one can tell. That they are 
 Dravidian is extremely improbable. 
 
8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 It is still more remarkable that alongside of the Dravidians 
 in the north and north-east of the Deccan plateau, and especi- 
 ally in the irregular hilly and wooded region which forms its 
 northern extremity, there is found a second linguistic family 
 which has at once striking resemblances to, and surprising 
 divergences from, the Dravidian languages. These have been 
 called the Munda languages, after one of the chief representa- 
 tives of the group. Since the year 1866 the misleading term 
 Kolarian has been introduced as an alternative designation, 
 and later still the arbitrary Kherwarian. We shall have to 
 consider more closely the peculiarities and distribution of 
 this group of languages when we come to treat of the history 
 of individual missions at work amongst these peoples. We are 
 here concerned with the question of the relation in which these 
 Munda peoples stand to the Dravidians. In their physical 
 characteristics no definite anthropometrical difference can be 
 detected. On anthropological principles they form with the 
 Dravidians one single racial group. In fact, the Munda races 
 are from an anthropological point of view precisely the most 
 characteristic expression of the Dravidian type. At the same 
 time they are so different in build and in feature that an 
 experienced missionary can distinguish a Munda from an 
 Oraon at the first glance. In customs and character there 
 is a profound difference. Their mythology points to a different 
 origin, and the languages are so different even in their very 
 vowel sounds that a Munda can never learn to pronounce 
 certain Oraon expressions. Whether it be possible to demon- 
 strate any connection between the Munda and Dravidian 
 languages is still an unsolved question. Much can be urged 
 in support of such a relationship, perhaps still more against it. 
 At any rate, the Munda and the Dravidian peoples live side by 
 side with each other in so remarkable a way that one is 
 strongly tempted to indulge in hazardous hypotheses regarding 
 the migrations of both groups. 
 
 What then is the relation which these two groups, the 
 Munda and Dravidian, bear to the other great racial and lin- 
 guistic families of the world ? For long an attempt was made to 
 assign the Dravidians to the Turko-Finnish or Turanian racial 
 and linguistic family, principally because they both spoke highly 
 developed agglutinative languages ; the Santali language, in 
 its remarkable clearness and lucidity, in its logical consistency 
 and its flexibility, is regarded as closely allied to Turkish, 
 the darling of the philologists. Upon this has been based a 
 theory that a migration of the Munda and Dravidians took place 
 from Central Asia into India. But such a theory finds no 
 support in anthropology. The interior of Central Asia, so far 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 as we can trace matters back scientifically, has always been 
 inhabited by people with broad skulls, of whom the majority 
 have in addition flat eyes, i.e. eyes that appear to slant ; and 
 narrow noses largely predominate among them. None of these 
 features are applicable to the Dravidians or Munda, even apart 
 from the fact that the characteristically dark colour of the 
 skin of these peoples would still require explanation. Similarly 
 the relations and affinities which it has been attempted to 
 establish with the Mongolian immigrants of Further India, with 
 the Papuans of Australia and the Alisures of the Philippines, 
 furnish us at any rate for the present with no clear direction. 
 In the meantime we must remain content with the fact that the 
 Munda and Dravidians are the original inhabitants of India, 
 regarding whose immigration absolutely no clear traces can be 
 discovered. All that can be asserted with some degree of 
 probability, in view of the present locations of both peoples, is 
 that the Munda were dispossessed by the Dravidians as they 
 pressed forward towards the north and the north-east. 
 
 Besides the Dravidians and the Munda we find in India a 
 widespread group of languages, predominant in the north and 
 west, which all trace their origin to Sanskrit, and through it 
 have striking affinities with the European languages. Scholars 
 have not been able to agree on a common comprehensive name 
 for this linguistic family; perhaps " Indo-Germanic" is the 
 designation in most common use. Representatives of three 
 characteristically different branches of this linguistic family are 
 found in India — the Perso-Iranian branch, the non-Sanskrit 
 branch, and, most important of all, that great and exclusive 
 family of the daughter languages of Sanskrit which for the sake 
 of simplicity we shall call the Indo-Aryan languages. These 
 three are spoken by nearly 220,000,000 people, or three-fourths 
 of the entire inhabitants of the Indian Empire, and they 
 therefore deserve a somewhat more detailed treatment. The 
 modern practice is to divide them into three groups : — ■ 
 
 I. The Outer Group — 
 
 In the north-west : Kashmiri, Kohistani, Lahnda, Sindhi. 
 In the south : Marathi (18,250,000). 
 
 In the east : Oriya (9,600,000), Bihari (34,500,000), Bengali 
 
 (44,600,000), Assamese (1,300,000). 
 
 II. The Middle Group— 
 
 Eastern Hindi (22,000,000). 
 III. The Inner Group — 
 
 In the west : Western Hindi (40,750,000), Rajasthani 
 
 (11,000,000), Gujarati (10,000,000), Panjabi 
 (17,000,000). 
 In the north : Western, Central, and Eastern Pahari (with an 
 
 aggregate of 3,000,000). 
 
lo HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 When we ask how these Indo-Aryan languages reached 
 India, we are confronted by the interesting problem, debated in 
 former times with so much enthusiasm and partisanship, of the 
 immigrations of the Indo-Germanic peoples. Where was the 
 original home of these peoples in whose hands the control of 
 the world has lain for centuries ? At first an attempt was 
 made to locate it in the plateau of Central Asia, then in 
 Scandinavia, or the Baltic Provinces of Russia, then in 
 Southern Russia and in the Steppes between Asia and Europe 
 — or even in the Punjab ! The problem need not concern us here. 
 We may content ourselves with the practically uncontested 
 fact that the peoples it is customary to call the Aryans ^ forced 
 their way into the Punjab from the north-west. As to when 
 and how this immigration occurred we know practically nothing, 
 and it is impossible to discuss here the numerous hypotheses of 
 Orientalists on the subject. During the first two-thirds of last 
 century the science of comparative philology, the brilliant 
 discovery of the nineteenth century, dominated the scientific 
 world to such an extent that its real or assumed results were 
 at once made the foundation for historical and ethnographical 
 theories. Owing to the fact that the Indo-Aryan languages 
 prevail universally in North India, predominate in Central 
 India, and extend far down both the east and the west coasts, 
 it became customary to speak of a great Aryan conquest of 
 India, to assume without question that the races speaking 
 Indo-Aryan languages were of Aryan blood, and consequently 
 to distinguish an Aryan North India from a Dravidian South 
 India. In more recent times, however, this view has been 
 fundamentally discredited, although it has not been found 
 possible to substitute for it any other equally simple theory. 
 Two large groups of facts exist side by side which have not 
 yet been satisfactorily related and adjusted to one another — 
 facts linguistic and facts anthropometrical." 
 
 To take the former first, recent investigations have shown 
 that the Indo-Aryan languages fall into two groups, of which 
 the " Inner group " comprises the western half of the United 
 Provinces, the Punjab, Rajputana, Gujarat, and the Central 
 Indian States. The scientific world is pretty well agreed that 
 
 ^ The explanation of the name is doubtful ; the immigrants did not themselves 
 adopt it as a national name, and it owes its origin to modern Orientalists. 
 
 "^ In passing we may call attention to a third fact. A great deal has been said 
 about Indo-Aryan culture and the transition from savagery to a relatively higher 
 civilisation which the Aryan immigration effected in India. But we are confronted 
 with the surprising fact that in the north-west of India, precisely in the regions in 
 which the relatively purest Aryans are supposed to dwell, the degree of culture is 
 generally speaking at its lowest, and the number of illiterates highest. These 
 "Aryan Provinces" are with respect to culture and intellectual keenness left far in 
 the shade by the Mongoloid Bengalis and the Dravidian Tamils ! 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 1 
 
 this linguistic region comprises — with a very wide circumference, 
 of course — the Madhyadesa, the famous ancient " Middle 
 Country," the original home of Aryan civilisation. Round 
 about this " Inner " group of languages there stretches in the most 
 singular way, on the west (Kashmiri, Lahnda, Sindhi), on the 
 south (Marathi), and on the east (Bihari, Bengali, Oriya, and 
 Assamese), a large group of closely related languages which 
 nevertheless present markedly distinct forms. The differences 
 of the "Inner" and "Outer" groups of languages are shown 
 especially in the manner of declension and conjugation. In 
 declension the " Inner" languages are at the transition stage, 
 in which the original inflected endings have almost entirely 
 disappeared, and have been replaced by auxiliary words which 
 have not yet become a part of the root, such as the suffixes, 
 ka, ko, se, etc. The " Outer " languages have gone a stage 
 further in linguistic development and have incorporated these 
 suffixes, thus forming new declensions with inflected endings. 
 In the matter of conjugation only two tenses (the present and 
 the future) and three participles (present, past perfect, and 
 future passive) have been retained out of the rich construction 
 of the old Indian verb ; all other forms must be made by 
 circumlocutions and auxiliary words, as in German and English. 
 The "Inner" languages, however, are content to employ the 
 simple predicates without any indication of the person, or any 
 change of form. " Mara," for example, means " I, thou, he, she, 
 we, you, or they struck." On the other hand, the "Outer" 
 languages attach enclitic pronouns to the predicates to indicate 
 the doer of an action, as in Latin and Greek. Hence the 
 grammar of the " Inner" languages can be given in a few pages, 
 like that of English, while in the " Outer " languages more or less 
 complicated declensions have to be learned. 
 
 What explanation then can be offered of the fact that the 
 " Inner " languages are surrounded by the " Outer" in an almost 
 complete circle? An attempt has been made to solve the 
 problem by distinguishing two main periods of Aryan immi- 
 gration, and supposing that a considerable time after the first 
 period came to an end, a second Aryan advance took place 
 which pressing into the midst of the earlier settlers established 
 itself in the central portion of the country, and through the 
 naturally expansive power of a superior culture, drove back on 
 all sides the representatives of the previous immigration. Such 
 is the ingenious hypothesis of Dr. Hornle, which has also 
 obtained the support of the linguistic and anthropological 
 experts of the Census Report for 1901, Dr. Grierson and 
 Sir Herbert Risley. 
 
 We enter a different sphere when we turn our attention to 
 
12 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the anthropological facts. These are all the more deserving of 
 careful consideration since in recent years comprehensive 
 investigations and measurements^ have been undertaken in all 
 parts of India by a large scientific Commission. As a result of 
 these investigations the peoples of India have been divided 
 into five groups. 
 
 In the Punjab, Rajputana, and Kashmir there are found 
 peoples surprisingly like one another in essential respects, with 
 long skulls, narrow noses, high stature, a very light-coloured 
 skin, dark eyes, and plentiful hair — in short, somewhat like what 
 the Aryan immigrants are supposed to have been. These 
 are known as the Indo-Aryan type. From an anthropological 
 standpoint it can hardly be questioned that they form a single 
 racial group, in spite of the fact that half of them speak 
 languages belonging to the " Inner" group, and the other half 
 languages of the " Outer " group. The hypotheses which have 
 often been advanced with great confidence, that the Rajputs or 
 the Jats of the Punjab are of Scythian origin, are untenable 
 both on anthropological and linguistic grounds. 
 
 Farther east, principally in the plains of the Ganges as far 
 as Bihar, we find dense masses of population in whom there is 
 an obvious intermingling of two different types. They also 
 have long skulls ; but their noses vary from medium to broad, 
 their stature is for the most part less than medium, and the 
 colour of their skin varies from light brown to black. The 
 peculiarity is, that the noses are narrower, the height greater, 
 and the skin lighter among the upper classes and castes, while 
 the noses become broader, the height less, and the skin darker 
 the lower we descend in the social scale. The breadth of the 
 nose has indeed been taken as a standard of social position. 
 At the top of the scale are the Bhuinhars, the aristocrats of 
 Hindustan and Bihar (with a nasal index of 73); after them 
 come the Bihar Brahmans (73.2), while quite at the bottom 
 are the Hindustani Chamars (with a nasal index of 86), and the 
 degraded Musahars of Bihar (88.7). This type has been called 
 the Aryo-Dravidian or the Hindustani. How characteristically 
 different it is from the Indo-Aryan type of the Punjab is shown, 
 for example, by the fact that the Hindustani Brahmans, with 
 a skull index almost the same as the despised Churahs of the 
 Punjab, have a much higher percentage of broad noses, a fact 
 which points to an intermingling of Dravidian blood. 
 
 When we turn farther to the west, towards Bengal and 
 
 Orissa, we find broad skulls, noses varying from medium to 
 
 broad, a stature from medium to short, and a dark skin. It is 
 
 one of the most distinctly pronounced types in India, and can 
 
 ^ See A in Appendix. 
 
INTRODUCTION 1 3 
 
 be easily recognised, no matter where the Bengali's pre-eminent 
 capacity as a civil servant may have led him. It has been called 
 the Mongolo-Dravidian or Bengali type. The characteristic 
 distinction is found in the broad skull. While the Brahmans of 
 Hindustan have a skull index of 73-74, and the Rajputs of 72.4, 
 the Brahmans of Bengal have an index of 79 and over. As we 
 pass from west to east in Bengal, there occurs gradually a very 
 marked predominance of Mongoloid features, especially with 
 regard to the shape of the skull. So much is this the case that 
 the Kachhi, or Kotch, in Eastern Bengal, whose conversion to 
 Hinduism dates from comparatively late times, have been 
 regarded sometimes as " a Dravidian race," and sometimes as of 
 " decisively Mongoloid " origin, according as the investigator has 
 arrived from the west or from the east. We have already 
 observed with respect to the Hindustani type that the Brahmans 
 are not obviously distinguishable from the mass of the people, 
 and do not even possess the finest features to be found in their 
 type, and we find the same thing to be true in a higher degree 
 of the Bengali Brahmans. It is unquestionable that there is an 
 infusion of Aryan blood in their families, but it is not strong 
 enough to distinguish them as a caste from the average Bengali 
 population as being " pure Aryans " or otherwise exceptional. 
 In spite of the Indo-Aryan languages, from an ethnological 
 standpoint, the west of Bengal is predominantly Dravidian, the 
 east predominantly Mongoloid. 
 
 The south of India, comprising a much larger area than that 
 in which the Munda-Dravidian languages are spoken at the 
 present day, and extending well into Hindustan, is occupied by 
 a population which are marked out as another and characteristic 
 type by skulls varying from medium to long, broad noses, a 
 stature varying from less than medium to short, and a dark 
 skin. It is known as the Dravidian. In the higher castes and 
 upper strata of society the distinguishing features are of course 
 partially obliterated ; the noses become narrower, the skin 
 lighter, and the figure more slender — clear proofs of an infusion, 
 however slight, of Indo-Aryan blood. But even among these 
 castes there are found so many specifically Dravidian features 
 that it would be a profitless task to try to distinguish them from 
 the rest of the population as later immigrants of one kind or 
 another. Here also it is remarkable that the Brahmans by no 
 means possess the finest features, or those which resemble most 
 closely the Indo-Aryans of the Punjab. With an average 
 height of only 63.8 inches (compared with 68.2 inches among 
 the Rajputs, 74.3 inches among the Jats, and even considerably 
 above 66.3 inches among the degraded Churahs), and average 
 breadth of nose of 'j^.'j (compared, moreover, with only 75.2 
 
14 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 among the despised Churahs of the Punjab, and 70.3 among the 
 Brahmans of Bengal), they are as a whole unmistakably 
 Dravidians. Here too we find a phenomenon which we have 
 found elsewhere in India, that the nose becomes broader, the 
 stature less, and the colour of the skin blacker, in proportion to 
 the lowness of the caste. 
 
 Besides these four types one is surprised to find along the 
 west coast of India from Gujarat down to Coorg a fifth anthropo- 
 logical type with broad skulls, having an index, even among 
 the highest castes, the Brahmans, the Coorgs, and the Maratha 
 Kunbis, of 79.7, rising to 92 (compared with 71.7 among the 
 Badagas, 73.6 among the Pariahs, 73.4 among the Cherumer 
 Malayalams of the Dravidian type). While the strikingly broad 
 type of skull might seem to connect the inhabitants of the west 
 coast, and especially of the Maratha country, with the Turko- 
 Iranians of Baluchistan, the former are distinctly smaller, and 
 possess much shorter and more markedly depressed noses. 
 However great, especially among the lower castes, the diffusion 
 of Dravidian blood may be, we have here a type obviously 
 different both from the Indo-Aryan type of North India and 
 the Dravidian type of the South, and history is unable to give 
 any explanation of the phenomenon. Perhaps the most 
 illuminating hypothesis is that we have here the results of a 
 comparatively powerful Scythian immigration, and a consequent 
 intermixture of blood. While the former tendency was to look 
 for traces of the Scythian influence, which is known to have 
 been dominant in the north and north-west of India in the first 
 four centuries of our era, especially among the Jats and the 
 Rajputs of the Punjab, and in the parts of India from which 
 Buddhism sprang, the modern method of classification regards 
 the broad skulls of Western India, and especially the Marathas, 
 as a Scytho-Dravidian type. 
 
 Recent anthropological investigations alter the traditional 
 view of the ethnology of India in most essential points. The 
 view which is more and more finding acceptance is that a 
 comparatively pure Indo-Aryan population is to be found only 
 in the Punjab and the regions adjoining it on the north and 
 south. The basal element of the population in the whole of the 
 rest of India is Dravidian, although there is an infusion of Indo- 
 Aryan blood which decreases as we pass from north to south, 
 and is greater in the higher classes than in the lower. Besides 
 this there is in the east, in Bengal, an infusion of Mongolian 
 blood which increases the farther east we go ; and along the 
 west coast, especially in the Maratha country and Coorg, an 
 equally strong infusion of Scythian (Mongoloid) blood. At the 
 same time the superiority of the Indo-Aryan element as the 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 possessor of a higher civilisation was so great that it entirely- 
 absorbed the Scythian languages in the west, drove back the 
 Mongolian languages of Eastern Bengal into the forests, super- 
 seded the more northerly of the original Dravidian languages, 
 and deprived those of the centre and south of large spheres of 
 influence. The result is that the philological history and the 
 present linguistic situation of India are a very untrustworthy 
 and frequently misleading guide to the ethnological past. Far 
 more doubtful still, generally speaking, are the claims of the 
 Brahmans, the Rajputs, and the remaining "twice born" castes 
 (Dwija) who wear the sacred cord (Janeo), to a more or less pure 
 " Aryan " origin. There was formerly a tendency to accept the 
 view that at least amongst those there were to be found tolerably 
 pure descendants of the Aryans, whom ardent imagination had 
 done so much to glorify. At the present time the tendency is 
 rather to regard these aristocratic classes as belonging for the 
 most part to the rest of the population, and to relegate their 
 " Aryan " traditions and genealogies in a greater or less degree 
 to the region of mythology. 
 
 It is necessary to bear in mind this ethnological inter- 
 mixture when we seek to understand the racial character of the 
 remaining quarter of the population of India, the sixty-two 
 millions of Muhammadans. From about the year 1000 A.D., 
 for a period of five centuries, streams of Muhammadan in- 
 vaders swept unintermittently into India from the north-west, 
 including successive confused swarms of such different peoples 
 as the Iranian Afghans (Pathans) and Persians, the Turanian 
 Turks and the Mongolian Moghuls. Following upon this 
 Muhammadan invasion, and accompanying it, came upwards 
 of five hundred years of Muhammadan rule, the most brilliant 
 and ruthless alien rule ever exercised in India. It is therefore 
 not to be wondered at that in almost all the large territories of 
 India more or less powerful fragments of a Muhammadan 
 population are to be found, nor that these should have had 
 a most diverse origin. In Kashmir, with a population of 
 2,150,000, the Muhammadans form 74 per cent, of the popula- 
 tion ; in the Punjab (14,000,000), 53 per cent, thus more than 
 one-half the entire population ; in the two provinces of Bengal and 
 Eastern Bengal (26,800,000), 30 per cent.; in Bombay (4,500,000), 
 18 per cent.; in the United Provinces (7,000,000), 14 percent, 
 of the whole population. Amongst the Muhammadan peoples, 
 the invaders, the Afghans, Persians, Turks, Mongols, etc., and 
 their descendants, universally claim the first place as the repre- 
 sentatives of the ruling peoples (just as the Aryans, amongst the 
 Hindus). Their families are the Ashraf, or the elite, as opposed 
 to the AJlaf, or the common people. In a number of provinces, 
 
1 6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 beneath the latter are the Arzal, the "lowest of all." It is 
 natural that in such a social scale as many families as possible 
 should want to belong to the Ashraf. In Bengal and Orissa 
 (excluding Bihar and the adjoining Mongoloid districts) out of 
 twenty-one million Muhammadans twenty million regard them- 
 selves as Ashraf. Anthropological investigations, however, show 
 that in this instance also the claim to foreign descent is in the 
 vast majority of cases without foundation. Only in the most 
 aristocratic families can a strong intermixture of a non-Indian 
 people be recognised. The mass of the population is dis- 
 tinguishable in no respect from its Hindu neighbours. The 
 millions of Muhammadans in India owe their existence in a 
 preponderating degree to the conversion to the faith of Hindu 
 families and races. Especially is this the case in Kashmir, the 
 Punjab, the United Provinces, and Bengal, where the greatest 
 number of Muhammadans are to be found. Whether these 
 conversions were chiefly the result of compulsion such as took 
 place under Aurungzebe and Tipu Sahib, or occurred voluntarily 
 through the adhesion of out-caste races which gained a social 
 advantage through admission into the comparatively respected 
 Muhammadan society, is of no importance in this connection. 
 The significant matter is that the Muhammadans of India are 
 not a people or a nation in the European sense. The only 
 unity which they possess is that which is given to them by a 
 common faith and a common language. 
 
 This latter, known as Hindustani or Urdu, is spoken, or at 
 least understood, by the Muhammadans of every part of India. 
 Through them it has become the lingua frajica of India. In 
 spite of its wide diffusion, it is not a language in the linguistic 
 sense, but only a dialect of Hindi. At the same time it is a 
 dialect of a decidedly peculiar character. When the Moghuls 
 made Delhi their magnificent capital and the Doab of the 
 Upper Ganges (the country between the Ganges and the 
 Jumna) the central territory of their empire, they adopted the 
 then prevalent dialect of W^estern Hindi as the court and 
 imperial language. Since the members of the reigning dynasty 
 had for the most part received a Persian education, and in their 
 family circle spoke a Persian language interspersed with many 
 Arabic fragments, it soon came to be regarded as a mark of 
 distinction to overload this Hindi dialect with Persian words, 
 just as in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the German 
 language was interlarded with French words. This Hindi 
 language adorned with Persian and Arabic words is known as 
 Hindustani or Urdu, The intermixture of the languages varies 
 in degree. There are some writings in this pliable tongue in 
 which almost all the words are of Persian or Arabic origin, and 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 only the grammar and syntax have remained Hindi. There 
 are other writings in which a purist tendency has rejected 
 almost every Arabic and Persian word, while the syntax and 
 order of words are Persian. The linguistic sense of the popula- 
 tion is so strong that it recognises more easily writings of the 
 first than of the other kind. A strongly marked Hindi 
 grammar and syntax with a superfluity of Persian and Arabic 
 words form the distinguishing marks of this unique dialect. 
 
 3. Religion and Caste ^ 
 
 What were the religious conceptions which the Aryan 
 invaders found existing among the Dravidian inhabitants of 
 India? The importance of this question will be better under- 
 stood when we remember that in the north as well as in the 
 south of India the vast majority of the population is of 
 Dravidian and not of Aryan origin. We have seen how as 
 regards the languages of North India the influence of the 
 invading Aryan culture made itself so powerfully felt that the 
 Dravidian languages were simply swept out of existence. It is 
 only in a few isolated instances that Dravidian words have been 
 able to maintain themselves in the modern languages of North 
 India. We are absolutely without knowledge regarding the 
 languages that were spoken in the north of India in the 
 pre-Aryan period. The investigator of religions cannot help 
 being captivated by the problem whether in the religious sphere 
 the displacement of the old Dravidians by the religious con- 
 ceptions of the Aryans was equally complete. The views of 
 scholars on the subject are widely divergent. It is certain that 
 Dravidian religious conceptions and practices are still to be 
 found among the Dravidian peoples of South India, especially 
 among the lower classes of the people, and among the Munda- 
 Dravidian forest and hill tribes west of the Vindhya and 
 Satpura plateaux. These seem to possess two characteristic 
 features. The first is a worship of spirits and demons which 
 consists principally in the propitiating of malicious demi-gods 
 and an effort to avert baneful diseases, etc. This " animistic " 
 tendency, although among the Dravidians it has little to do 
 with the worship of ancestors, finds parallels in the popular 
 religions of China and Japan. It is something entirely different 
 from the soaring pantheism of the Aryans. It reaches its 
 
 ^ The general outline of the religious development of India has been given by 
 the author elsewhere {Nordindische Missionsfahrten, pp. 257-294). There are also 
 many accounts by others in existence, and it is therefore unnecessary to add yet 
 another to their number. We wish here to make only a few remarks supplementary 
 to the outline alluded to above. 
 
1 8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 lowest depths in the devil-dances of Malabar, Tinnevelly, and 
 Ceylon — a natural result, since in these districts the upper 
 classes are under the influence of Aryan deities and concep- 
 tions, while the lower orders are left to the mercy of rank and 
 wanton superstition. But even where religion has not become 
 so degraded and brutal, for example among the Munda, Santals, 
 and Oraons, it still possesses a gloomy character, and has 
 nothing elevating and comforting to offer. The other char- 
 acteristic feature which we find among many Dravidians and 
 Munda, who have still preserved their distinguishing peculiarities, 
 and which we must therefore regard as a heritage of the old 
 Dravidian religion, is totemism. Each separate people is 
 divided into a larger or smaller number of clans or family 
 groups which regard some object as their totem or clan 
 emblem and treat it as sacred — for example, the tiger, the 
 snake, the weasel, the sparrow, the tortoise, the mushroom, 
 the betel-nut palm, rice, a certain shape of basket, etc. Of 
 such groups no less than 323 have been counted among 
 the Munda, 46 among the Hos, 73 among the Oraons, 
 91 among the Santals. Marriage must always take place 
 outside the members of the totem clan. It is sometimes 
 possible to trace this system of blood-relationship even 
 amongst sections of the population which have already be- 
 come submerged in the turbid mire of the lower Hindu castes, 
 as in Orissa among the Kumhars, who are comparatively high 
 in the gradation of castes, and in Bengal among the Mahilis 
 and Kurmis, who are an offshoot from the Santals. Whether 
 the Siva and snake-worship, the veneration of the male and 
 female sexual organs (Lingam and Yonin), the offering of 
 petitions to sacred trees and stones, are an old Dravidian 
 heritage which has spread widely and become rampant in the 
 lower grades of Hinduism, is a question which can hardly be 
 answered with certainty. Of any religious development among 
 the Dravidians we know nothing. 
 
 The most peculiar religious and social product of India is 
 Caste. Unfortunately we know very little that is trustworthy 
 regarding its origin, and clearly from the time of Manu Indian 
 society has been divided into four great groups — the Brahman, 
 the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Sudra. Outside of and 
 below these four classes are the great multitudes of the lower 
 classes, the " out-castes," whom it has become the custom in 
 recent times to call the " Panchama," or fifth rank. Each of 
 these five classes is again split up into numerous subdivisions 
 which are distinguished from one another with the utmost 
 strictness and hermetically sealed. The Census of 1901 
 reckons 2378 principal castes; all lower castes included, there 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 must be at least 100,000. The great Scottish missionary, Dr. 
 John Wilson, was engaged in the latter years of his life in writing 
 a monumental work on the castes of India. He got as far in the 
 second volume as page 678, and he had not yet completed 
 the first great division, the Brahmans. Among these latter 
 alone 1886 castes have been counted. Thus the small state of 
 Cochin alone can show 420 castes. 
 
 The outstanding features of the caste system are as follows : 
 firstly, those belonging to it may marry only within the limits 
 of their own caste ; secondly, they eat only such food as has 
 been prepared by a member of the same caste or — in accord- 
 ance with carefully prescribed rules — of a recognised higher caste ; 
 thirdly, they believe themselves to be polluted through contact 
 with, and sometimes even through the approach of, members of 
 a lower caste, and restore their Levitical purity by means of 
 elaborate ablutions and other ceremonies ; fourthly, they are 
 bound by heredity to one occupation and one form of religion, 
 and are expelled from the caste if they change either the one or 
 the other. Nowhere else in the world, not even where different 
 races have come into conflict with one another, has there been 
 developed so extraordinary a social system, controlling so com- 
 pletely and ruthlessly the whole private and public life. A 
 comparison has been made with the conditions prevailing in 
 ancient Egypt or with the divisions into castes introduced into 
 the Eastern Empire by the Emperor Theodosius, Attention 
 has been directed to the race feeling between the whites and 
 the blacks in America. Analogies have been advanced from 
 history and from the conditions of the ancient Persians, Greeks, 
 and Romans. But all these resemblances only make the 
 characteristic differences of the Indian situation stand out in 
 greater relief. It is very remarkable that in the Punjab, which, 
 as we have seen, is comparatively the most purely Aryan 
 district of India, caste is least rigid and shows a surprising 
 flexibility. On the other hand, caste is most consistently 
 observed, and is most inflexible amongst the Tamils, where a 
 racial conflict between Aryans and Dravidians scarcely ever 
 occurred, and where the Aryans never appeared as conquerors. 
 In spite of all scientific investigation, the real inward motive 
 which produced the caste divisions has never been explained. 
 Sir Denzil Ibbetson, to whom we are indebted for one of the 
 best explanations of the caste system,^ sums up the "steps in 
 the process by which the castes in the Punjab were developed " 
 as follows : firstly, the division into clans, which is peculiar to 
 all early forms of society; secondly, the guilds based on 
 
 1 Report of the Census of the Punjab, i88r, pp. 172-341, reproduced in part in the 
 Ethnographic Appendices to vol. i. of the Census Report for /goi, p. 234 ff. 
 
20 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 hereditary occupation, which belong to the middle period of 
 all society ; thirdly, the exaltation of the priestly office to an 
 extent unknown in other countries; fourthly, the exaltation of 
 the Levitical (Brahmanical) blood by laying emphatic stress 
 upon the necessarily hereditary nature of this service ; fifthly, 
 the maintenance and support of this principle by invented 
 theories regarding Hindu faith or cosmogony, and equally 
 arbitrary regulations regarding marriage, clean and unclean 
 vocations and foods, and through precepts relating to the 
 conditions and the degree of social intercourse permitted 
 between different castes. Another scholar, Nesfield, states 
 emphatically in his book, A Brief View of the Caste System 
 of the North- Western Provinces and Oudh, that " for at least 
 three thousand years there has existed no real difference be- 
 tween the Aryan and the original inhabitants," and that " if a 
 stranger were to go for the first time through the classrooms in 
 the Sanskrit College in Benares he would never dream for a 
 moment that there was a racial difference between these aristo- 
 cratic Brahman students and the street-sweepers outside," His 
 conviction is that " the trade or occupation, and that alone, is 
 the basis upon which the caste system of India has been built 
 up." Senart, a distinguished French scholar who has written 
 a book entitled Les Castes dans I'htde, seeks to explain the 
 origin of the Indian caste system from the fundamental con- 
 ceptions regarding society common to the Indo- Germanic 
 peoples, and adduces a series of surprising parallels ; but he 
 leaves the real problem unsolved, why it should have been that 
 in India alone these conceptions led to the development of the 
 caste. Sir H. H. Risley,the able and learned Director of the Census 
 of 1 90 1, falls back upon the fact that the primary force in this 
 extraordinary development was the racial conflict between the 
 whites and the blacks. But how it produced this result, and 
 how it is possible for this starting-point to explain even the 
 principal castes or the leading features of the system, he can 
 give no account of.^ According to the Census of 1901, the 
 Brahman castes numbered 14,893,258 souls. How large is 
 the membership of all the " twice born " castes cannot be stated, 
 because in different parts of India and at different periods 
 different castes have appropriated the Brahmanical cord. 
 
 Two examples will show the strength and vitality of the 
 caste spirit even at the present day. As far as its own principles 
 are concerned, the attitude of Muhammadanism towards the 
 caste system is one of rejection, or rather of active hostility. 
 The equality of all men before Allah is one of its leading 
 doctrines. In India, however, Muhammadanism has so little 
 
 ' General Census Report, 1 901, § S62 ff. p. 549 ii. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 been able to escape the prevailing current that at the present 
 day we see Muhammadan society divided into castes to an 
 extent almost as great as that of the Hindus themselves. 
 More than twenty-eight millions claim to be Shekhs, over one 
 million to be Saiads, nearly three millions to be Jolahas, and so 
 on. Their marriage relations are almost as exclusive as those 
 of the Hindus. On the other hand, the caste divisions and 
 customs of the Muhammadans are by no means the same 
 everywhere, and the transgression of them is not regarded as 
 impossible, as is shown by a proverb current in North India : 
 " Last year I was a Johala ; to-day I am Shekh ; next year, if 
 the prices rise, I shall become a Saiad," Since the extermina- 
 tion of Buddhism in India it has been a standing feature of the 
 teaching of all great reformers that, in opposition to the 
 exclusiveness of caste, they seek and proclaim means by which 
 all men may become partakers of salvation. In the circle of 
 their followers, in their sects, they set aside the limits of caste, 
 or at least mitigate their severity. So long as the religious 
 impulses which emanated from within them have remained 
 fresh, and the fire of enthusiasm has continued to glow, this 
 freedom from caste has been the attractive force which has won 
 disciples. But when the force of the first love has become 
 extinct the tendency to fall back under the spell of the old 
 caste restrictions has universally proved itself to be irresistible. 
 Basappa of Kalyan, in Western India, founded the sect of the 
 Lingaites in the twelfth century on the basis of the gospel that 
 all men were equal who had received the eightfold sacrament 
 which he had appointed. But at the last Census (1901) the 
 Lingaites, in a great petition to the Government, characterised 
 as " a most offensive and mischievous command " the order for 
 them all to be counted as belonging to one and the same caste ; 
 " let them be numbered and separately classified as Brahmans, 
 Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Sudras." This example is character- 
 istic to a degree of Indian sentiment and thought. 
 
 Modern Hinduism is a Proteus-like mixture of the most 
 diverse elements. And the only method by which any idea of 
 it can be given is to lay the finger on a few of its exceptionally 
 prominent features. In many districts it has succeeded in 
 establishing itself to only a small extent, and is little more than 
 a varnish superadded to the religious conceptions and practices 
 of the ancient inhabitants. This state of affairs is especially 
 striking in Eastern Bengal, in almost the whole of the Madras 
 Presidency, especially in Malabar, South Kanara, Tinnevelly, and 
 also upon the island of Ceylon. In all these places the original 
 demon-worship is clearly apparent, and the process of conversion 
 to Hinduism is only in its early stages. 
 
22 
 
 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 The whole world of Hinduism is rife with sects. The 
 national spirit of India appears to be inexhaustible in its 
 productivity. Yet it is occupied partly with worthless religious 
 vagaries and monstrosities. Sometimes, however, profoundly 
 spiritual souls have clearly grasped individual truths, and 
 have carried them out to their extreme consequences with 
 the dogged pertinacity which is characteristic of the Indian 
 spirit. In other instances great religions which have poured 
 into India from every quarter have stimulated Indian thinkers 
 to adopt individual principles and to work them up along with 
 Indian elements into a new system. Buddhism was originally 
 an Indian sect which, especially since its transplantation to 
 Central Asia, has attained the importance of a universal 
 religion. Other sects have played a large part at any rate in 
 the history of India, as the Jains, who even at the present day 
 possess a certain importance in Western India, and the Sikhs in 
 the Punjab. A large group of sects have as their sole raison 
 d'etre the fact that their followers support with passionate 
 partiality the rival claims either of the ancient Vedic gods or of 
 the puranic eccentricities of the Indian pantheon, such as 
 Durga, Krishna, Rama, etc. Such are the Vaishnavites, or 
 worshippers of Vishnu, and the Saivites, or worshippers of Siva, 
 the Saktas, the worshippers of the generative forces, the Sauras, 
 the Smartas, and so on. The struggle between the worshippers 
 of Vishnu and of Siva, the Vaishnavites and Saivites, has, at any 
 rate for South India, and especially the Tamil country, a real 
 importance from the standpoint of comparative religion. The 
 lowest stage of degradation is reached as a rule by the Saktas, 
 whose worship of the generative power resolves itself into 
 nightly orgies and the unrestrained indulgence of licentiousness. 
 Another large group of sects maintains its existence by a 
 protest against a particular excrescence of Hinduism, such as 
 polytheism, idol-worship, etc. ; for example, the Kabirpanthis, 
 the disciples of the eccentric Kabir; the Satnamis, the disciples 
 of Ghasi-Das, etc. As regards the United Provinces more 
 particularly, we possess tolerably exact statistics concerning 
 the number of followers belonging to the more important sects 
 in these Provinces. The figures for 1901 are as follows: — 
 
 Panchpiria . 
 
 . 1,750,000 
 
 Ramanandi,. 
 
 
 
 • i,333>ooo 
 
 Lingaite 
 
 . 1,000,000 
 
 Eishnoi 
 
 
 
 289,000 
 
 Nanakshahi 
 
 250,000 
 
 Kabirpanthi 
 
 
 
 216,000 
 
 Pasupat 
 
 88,000 
 
 Vallabhachaiia . 
 
 
 
 87,000 
 
 Satnami 
 
 74,000 
 
 Radhavallabhi . 
 
 
 
 48,000 
 
 Gorakpanlhi 
 
 32,000 
 
 Nimbarak . 
 
 
 
 19,000 
 
 Radhaswami 
 
 15,000 
 
 Sivanaiaini . 
 
 
 
 6,600 
 
 In the 
 
 course of our consideration of 
 
 th 
 
 le 
 
 history of 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 individual missions in India we shall meet with several sects 
 which will require more detailed consideration. But we should 
 be launching out on a shoreless ocean if we were to attempt in 
 this place to give the history and the doctrines of even the more 
 important sects. They resemble, taken as a whole, the wild 
 Indian jungle which grows and luxuriates without bourn or 
 bound, but which also withers away and dies. This much, 
 however, one may venture to say, that there is no folly too 
 great, no practice too horrible, not to find in India a company 
 of believers, provided that some man be forthcoming to maintain 
 it in a simulated tone of profound inward conviction. 
 
 In orthodox Hinduism two great leading tendencies are to 
 be found side by side with one another and frequently inter- 
 mingling, the one a coarse materialistic idolatry, and the other 
 a pantheism which spiritualises everything. The strength and 
 extent of the vulgar idolatry is known to every one who has 
 travelled through the towns and villages of India, especially if 
 he has spent some time at the great centres of Hinduism, 
 Benares, Trichinopoly, Chidambaram, Rameswaram, and other 
 places. Here idolatry literally swarms, and often in the most 
 horrible forms ; especially widespread is the worship of Siva in 
 the form of the Lingam (Phallus) or of Durga as " Yonin." A 
 lively trade is carried on in idols of all kinds. Hand in hand 
 with this goes the worship which is paid to sacred rivers, and 
 before all others to the Ganges, the holy mother Ganga. 
 Pilgrimages to the holy places along the banks of the Ganges 
 from Hard war, where its waters enter the plains, to Sagar, the 
 legend-begirt island away down in the Sundarbans, are amongst 
 the religious usages most commonly practised. Sacred places, 
 pools, idols, trees, stones, and especially sacred animals, the cow, 
 the monkey, the snake, etc., and plants {e.g. the tulsi plant) play 
 so large a role that it is often difficult to know where the lower 
 Fetishism and Shamanism ceases and Hinduism begins. And 
 yet the whole of this active worship which seems to us so 
 profane and distasteful is carried on by millions of worshippers, 
 pilgrims and frequenters of religious festivals (melas), with all 
 the marks of religious feeling and with a zeal that makes 
 these sacred shrines and popular religious festivals in their 
 turn a hotbed for the growth of a bigoted and fanatical 
 Hinduism. 
 
 At the same time there is to be found among all classes of 
 society from the highest down to the very Pariahs a current of 
 spiritualistic mysticism, a tendency to pantheistic speculation, 
 which might be expected to deprive the coarser idol-worship of 
 any solid foundation. From early times six schools of philosophy, 
 or Darsanas, have been recognised as orthodox systems. The 
 
24 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Vedanta system especially has through Sankaracharya and 
 other acute dialecticians attained a practically classic position. 
 Its relentlessly consistent monistic system, according to which 
 only the absolute possesses true reality, while the whole world 
 of sense impression is only deceptive appearance and an 
 unending absorption in the absolute the sole aim and goal of 
 humanity, is by no means restricted in its magical influence to 
 a small circle of philosophically educated thinkers. Its doctrines 
 have become part and parcel of Hindu life.^ 
 
 The three principally recognised deities of India are Brahma, 
 Vishnu, and Siva, which may be described briefly as the creative, 
 the sustaining, and destructive powers. Brahma, however, has 
 probably never been an object of popular worship, and at the 
 present day is little more than a philosophic abstraction, a god 
 of the Brahmans. In Rajputana, on the banks of the Pushkara 
 Lake, there is pointed out as an object of curiosity the sole 
 temple which has been built in India in honour of Brahma. 
 The popular deities are Vishnu and Siva — Vishnu generally 
 amongst the middle classes of the population, amongst a large 
 number of reforming sects and in the Orissa region ; Siva 
 generally among the speculative Brahmans on the one hand, and 
 on the other amongst the large masses of the more sunken 
 population in South India, amongst whom he is worshipped in 
 the popular form of the destroyer, of Lingam, and so on. 
 Neither of these deities could survive the severe competition for 
 popular favour were it not that each receives the powerful 
 support of its own subordinate deities. The worship of Vishnu 
 draws its strength from the teaching of the ten incarnations 
 (Avatar) of the god, of which nine belong to the past, while the 
 tenth has yet to come. By far the most popular of these are 
 Rama and Krishna. As Rama, Vishnu is celebrated in the 
 Ramayana epic, and as this poem is a sort of bible amongst the 
 Hindus, the Rama legend has a simply inexhaustible vitality. 
 The popularity of Rama is exceeded only by that of the 
 Krishna legends, which in moral and poetical contents are 
 incomparably more profound, and which especially in recent 
 times have found an enthusiastic following. The youthful 
 exploits of this shepherd-god, his disgusting amours and his 
 varied adventures, are the favourite narratives of both old and 
 young. That this favourite god should prove so unworthy a 
 pattern has a most injurious effect upon public morals. Apart 
 from certain large temples and famous sacred cities, such 
 as Srirangam near Trichinopoly, Tirupatur and Madhura, 
 
 ^ The able Wesleyan missionary, Rev. Henry Haigh of Mysore, has acutely 
 described the average Hindu as half a philosophical hair-splitter and half a materialistic 
 fetish-worshipper {Wesleyan Missionary Notes, 1896, p. 86 ei sei^.). 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 Puri is the principal scene of Vishnu worship. The popularity 
 of Siva is increased in the north by his frightful consort, 
 Kali, the bloodthirsty goddess of death and pestilence, who 
 must be daily propitiated by blood and sacrifices, and in 
 the south, in addition to the foregoing, by his exceptionally 
 popular sons, Ganesa, the elephant-headed, big-bellied god of 
 scholars and merchants, and Subrahmanya, the god of war. It 
 has been supposed that the worship of Siva and his associates 
 is either entirely of Dravidian origin or at least has been 
 largely moulded under the influence of the Dravidian spirit. 
 
 To some extent side by side with this rivalry of the two 
 popular deities the religious spirit of India exhibits two leading 
 tendencies, two " ways of salvation." That most congenial 
 to the Vishnu worship is the " way of faith " — Bhakti-Marga — 
 a believing self-surrender to the deity, a brooding meditation 
 accompanied by an unwearying thought-annihilating repetition 
 of his name. At the same time there are not wanting evidences 
 of real and profound religious aspirations which partly recall 
 Christian motives, and are ascribed by many scholars to 
 Christian influences. They are found in their comparatively 
 purest form in the teachings of Chaitanya (1485 to 1527), 
 whose activity is one of the most pleasing phenomena in the 
 history of Indian religions. More proper to the Siva worship 
 is the " way of works " — Karma-Marga — which seeks to obtain 
 merit by mortification, self-castigation, and the infliction of 
 all kinds of self-torture. To gaze fixedly at the blazing sun, 
 until the eyes are completely burnt away, to allow oneself to 
 be scorched in the burning rays of the sun between blazing 
 fires, to stretch out motionless one or both arms in the air 
 for a period of years until all life deserts them, to measure 
 hundreds of miles of lengthy pilgrimages with one's body in 
 the dust, and many other similar practices, are the characteristic 
 forms in which Indian piety manifests itself, and are especially 
 peculiar to Siva worship. Closely connected with this are the 
 ubiquitous and highly esteemed religious beggars, the Yogi 
 and Gosain, the Sannyasi and Bairagi, who have completely 
 renounced the world and are seeking the way to God solely 
 through mortification. These, however, are a supreme example 
 of the way in which extremes meet, and of how, especially in 
 a country where unreality and falsehood occupy so large a 
 place as in India, there is only a step between the most 
 frightful self-torture and the most hollow hypocrisy. By far 
 the majority of those who make an occupation of religion at 
 the present day in India, and who wander from shrine to shrine 
 miserably clad, besmeared from head to foot with ashes and 
 cow-dung, frequently with crippled limbs, are worthless idlers, 
 
26 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 immoral vagabonds and inveterate hypocrites, who make up 
 for the privations of their apparently sacred calling by licentious 
 orgies of hemp-smoking and similar indulgences. 
 
 It is generally possible to recognise the special caste of a 
 Hindu at the first glance by the marks which every religious 
 person paints upon his forehead each day with white or red 
 ashes and a colour of prescribed composition. The Vaishnavites 
 have two vertical lines which are joined at the bottom by a 
 curve ; the Saivites, however, horizontal lines which often extend 
 over the whole forehead, and are even repeated on the breast 
 and upper arm. Divine worship in the Christian sense with 
 an assembled congregation is unknown to Hinduism. The 
 temple priests treat the idols committed to their care very 
 much as children do their dolls among ourselves. They move 
 them to and fro, adorn them on feast-days with gold and 
 jewels, wash them in sacred water, light lamps in front of 
 them, lay food before them, take them out for drives, and so 
 on. Several idols, such as the Minachi of the Madura temple, 
 and the black idol of the Srirangam temple, have at their 
 disposal incalculable treasures of silk and purple vestments, 
 gold and silver, jewels and diamonds. The worship of the 
 faithful consists for the most part only in postures of the 
 body (known as Puja), murmuring of uncomprehended Sanskrit 
 " mantras," and the presentation of flowers, grains of rice, 
 small coins, etc. Prayer in our sense of the word is rare, 
 and in any case does not form part of the regular religious 
 usages. 
 
CHAPTER I 
 EARLY MISSIONS 
 
 I. Before the Landing of the Portuguese 
 
 (a) Earliest Times 
 
 The history of Indian missions goes back to the earliest period 
 of Church history, possibly as far back as the first century of 
 the Christian era. Unfortunately the data for the centuries 
 before the Reformation are so disconnected and isolated, and 
 so untrustworthy, or consist so much of mere indirect inferences, 
 that it is impossible to write a history of missions during this 
 period. We shall content ourselves, therefore, with tabulat- 
 ing the more important data, and adding a few explanatory 
 comments. The data are of three kinds. Sometimes they 
 are isolated notes in ecclesiastical writers or documents ; these 
 as a rule are of exceptional value, but are of too fragmentary 
 a nature to allow of any connected narration. Then there are 
 detailed narratives, it may be patristic apocrypha, or chronicles 
 of the Syrian Christians. These are almost universally devoid 
 of any historical basis. Finally, there are the traces in Indian 
 literature of the influence of Christian ideas. But in regard 
 to these there is great diversity of opinion among scholars 
 regarding the extent of this influence, or even as to whether 
 it existed at all. 
 
 The apocryphal Acts of Thomas and their continuation. 
 The Llartyrdom of Thomas, both probably dating from the 
 second half of the third century, recount the missionary labour 
 of the Apostle Thomas in India. The Indian king Gondophares, 
 according to these Acts, sent the merchant Abbanes to 
 Jerusalem to find a capable architect for a palace which was 
 to be built. In the slave market at Jerusalem Abbanes met 
 with Jesus, who pointed out Thomas as a capable builder, and 
 sold him to him for ^3 of uncoined silver. Abbanes and 
 Thomas thereafter returned to the court of Gondophares. On 
 his arrival Thomas worked all kinds of miracles, and converted 
 
28 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and baptized the king along with many of his subjects. After 
 some time he left the kingdom of Gondophares and travelled 
 to another part of India, where a king, Misdeus, reigned. There 
 he met with a martyr's death. His bones were conveyed to 
 Edessa (Urfah), and there a church was built over his remains. 
 
 This story, so improbable in itself, receives unexpected 
 support through numerous discoveries of coins in the mountain- 
 ous districts of Eastern Iran and the adjoining districts of 
 India. These show not only that in the centuries about the 
 time of the birth of Christ the Greek language and culture were 
 widespread in these regions, but also that King Gondophares, or 
 Undopherres, of Arachosia, was a genuine historical personage. 
 It may therefore be inferred with certainty from the apocryphal 
 narrative that in these border lands of North-West India 
 Christian communities were already in existence at the time of 
 the composition of these apocryphal writings, and that such 
 communities traced their origin to the Apostle Thomas. Else- 
 where in the traditions of the early Church the activity of the 
 apostle is located in Parthia, the eastern boundary of which 
 may have extended at that time into modern India. 
 
 "About the year i8o," says Eusebius in his Church History, 
 " there were still many evangelists who sought to imitate the 
 godly zeal of the apostles, by contributing their share to the 
 extension and upbuilding of the kingdom of God. Among 
 these was Pantaenus, who is reputed to have reached the Indians, 
 amongst whom he is stated to have found the Gospel of St. 
 Matthew, which, prior to his arrival, was in the possession of 
 many who had known Christ. To these Bartholomew, one of 
 the apostles, is reported to have preached, and to have left 
 behind him the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew characters, which 
 had been retained up to the time in question. This Pantaenus, 
 after many praiseworthy achievements, was at last placed at 
 the head of the school at Alexandria." ^ The importance of 
 this much-discussed statement of Eusebius regarding the 
 missionary labours of Pantaenus in India loses v/eight through 
 the fact that the name India was applied quite indiscriminately, 
 and in its wider sense it included all countries east and south- 
 east of the better known geographical horizon. Many scholars 
 are therefore inclined to restrict the activity of Pantaenus to 
 Southern Arabia. On the other hand, it is certain that an 
 exceptionally active trade was carried on at that period between 
 Egypt, the home of Pantaenus, and India. Moreover, in a 
 treasury excavated in the neighbourhood of Coimbatore, 135 
 coins were found belonging to the reign of Augustus, and 378 to 
 that of Tiberius ; and in a find of coins at Calicut in the year 1 850 
 ^ See Appendix B. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 29 
 
 several hundreds were discovered all dating from a period no 
 later than the reign of the Emperor Nero. There could be 
 no doubt, therefore, that in the time of Pantsenus it was easy to 
 reach India from Alexandria. We should have less hesitation 
 in interpreting the statement of Eusebius as applying to India 
 proper if we knew that Jerome's remark possessed any inde- 
 pendent authority : " On account of the fame of his superior 
 learning Pantsenus was sent to India by Bishop Demetrius (of 
 Alexandria) to preach Christ among the Brahmans and philo- 
 sophers of that people," ^ The difficulty is to understand 
 what use Indian Christians can have made of a Hebrew copy 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel, and how Bartholomew could have 
 preached to them in this language. This difficulty could be 
 explained only if there existed, as early as the first century, 
 colonies of emigrant Jews on the Malabar coast, and if an active 
 Christian propaganda was carried on among them at that 
 period. Neither of these suppositions obtains the slightest 
 support from other sources. Even the early traditions of the 
 present-day Jews in Cochin do not assign their immigration to 
 a date earlier than the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus. 
 And Jews who had left their country under the influence of an 
 event of this character would have been a most unfavourable 
 object for missionary effort. 
 
 Among the 318 bishops who took part in the Council of 
 Nicea there was a certain " John, bishop of all Persia and 
 Greater India." We know nothing further regarding either 
 himself or his diocese. About the year 50 A.D, the Emperor 
 Constantine sent an ambassador to the Sabseans or Himyarites 
 (Homeritae) of South Arabia " to convert them to the true 
 faith. He was anxious, by means of fine presents and winning 
 words, to establish friendly relations with the princes of Saba 
 and to obtain permission for Roman subjects carrying on trade 
 in these regions, to build churches for themselves ; and the 
 same right for the natives who had been converted to Christi- 
 anity." The leader of this embassy was Bishop Theophilus, 
 an Indian, a native of the island of Divus, who as a child had 
 been sent by his countrymen to the Romans as a hostage, and 
 had received a Roman education. He took advantage of his 
 journey as ambassador to revisit his island home. " And 
 thence he journeyed to other parts of India, and did much to 
 improve the Church practices there — i.e., in external customs ; 
 for example, the custom of the congregation to remain seated 
 during the reading of the Gospel lessons and similar points in 
 ritual. But with respect to doctrine he found nothing that 
 needed correction, and had only to confirm what had been 
 
 ^ See Appendix C. 
 
30 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 believed there from the earliest times, namely, that the Son was 
 of a different substance from the Father." ^ Unfortunately 
 scholars hold the most diverse views with regard to Divus, 
 the island home of Theophilus, and its inhabitants, the 
 Diva^i ; and the whole account is consequently left without 
 foundation. We do not know either in what region or in what 
 circumstances the reforming activities of Theophilus were 
 carried on. 
 
 In the year 345 A.D. there landed in Malabar, according to 
 the traditions of Thomas Christians of South India, under the 
 convoy of a Jerusalem merchant, Thomas, a bishop from 
 Edessa, accompanied by presbyters and deacons and by a 
 company of men and women, youths and maidens from 
 Jerusalem, Bagdad, and Nineveh, who had attached themselves 
 to him. They were welcomed with great rejoicings by the 
 Christians of the country, and endowed with important privi- 
 leges by the ruler of the land, so that their arrival was the 
 beginning of a flourishing epoch in the history of the Malabar 
 Church.^ That a large emigration took place from Syria 
 and Mesopotamia to Malabar is quite possible. This is the 
 simplest explanation of the ecclesiastical dependence of the 
 Syrian Church upon the patriarchate at Antioch, of the Syrian 
 ecclesiastical language and literature, and generally speaking of 
 the Syro-Nestorian type of the whole ecclesiastical life of the 
 Syrian Christians during the Middle Ages. That such an 
 emigration may have taken place about the year 345 A.D. is 
 rendered more probable by the fact that in the year 343 A.D. 
 there broke out in the Persian Empire a severe persecution of 
 the Christians, lasting for a period of nearly forty years. But 
 there exists no further evidence or certain information regarding 
 this Syrian emigration. The Thomas of Jerusalem who is 
 referred to, known as Thomas Cananaus, the Khan or Knaye 
 Thomas, plays a large part in the traditions of the Syrian 
 Christians. He is supposed to have founded the city, or at 
 least the Christian quarter, of Mahadevapatnam (" City of the 
 Great God," or " of the Great Gods "), the later Kranganur. 
 He is said to have had two families of children, the one by his 
 lawful wife, the other by a Nayar concubine ; the former resided 
 south of the river of Kranganur, the latter on the north. The 
 fairer Tekk Baghars, who pride themselves on their Syrian 
 origin, trace their descent from the southern family, the far 
 more numerous, darker Wadakk Baghars from the northern. 
 It is surprising to find that the bishops and the other native 
 clergy from early times have been chosen from the latter. This 
 
 ^ See Appendix D. 
 
 - Anecdota Syriaca collegit edidit explicuit. J. P. N. Land, Leyden, 1862. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 31 
 
 division of the Syrian Christians is even to-day a striking 
 phenomenon. Whether Thomas of Jerusalem was a historical 
 personage, whether the fact that the Syrian Christians have 
 from early times called themselves " Thomas " Christians, has 
 anything to do with his name, and whether this Thomas has 
 been confused by an ever more luxuriant tradition with the 
 equally mythical exploits of the Apostle Thomas, are questions 
 that cannot be settled with any certainty.^ In a compendium 
 of the history of Syria translated and published in 181 8 by a 
 missionary named Bailey there is found the following character- 
 istic summary of the Syrian tradition : " In the course of time 
 the Nazarites (the Syrian emigrants) began to intermarry with 
 the Christians in Malabar. The most important among them 
 had four thousand houses on the north side of the Kranganur, 
 and the inferior seventy-two on the south side. The northern 
 branch walks in the ways of their father, and the southern in 
 those of their mother. The northern trade in gold, silver, and 
 silk, the southern in wholly different commodities. Thus were 
 the Nazarites, the children of God, who dwelt in Kranganur, 
 divided. Thereafter Thomas of Jerusalem instituted inquiries 
 after the descendants of the two priests ordained by the Apostle 
 Thomas, and appointed along with the bishops and priests one 
 of them as archdeacon and others as leading men, in order that 
 they might watch over the affairs of the Malabar Christians, 
 and maintain justice by protecting the weak and punishing 
 wrong-doers. From that time bishops were regularly sent from 
 Antioch, but the archdeacon and the leading men were taken 
 from the Christians in Malabar." ^ It has been often maintained 
 that in the following centuries the Indian Church was overrun 
 with Manichseism, but no convincing proof has been adduced 
 up to the present time. 
 
 About the year 530 the Egyptian merchant Cosmas Indico- 
 pleustes made a journey in Indian waters. Unfortunately only 
 the following brief reference to the Christian natives of South 
 India is to be found in his writings. "What I have seen and 
 experienced in the majority of places during my stay I truthfully 
 declare. On the island of Taprobane {i.e. Ceylon) in Inner India, 
 where the Indian Ocean is, there is to be found a community 
 of Christians consisting of both clergy and the faithful, but I do 
 not know whether there are any Christians to be found beyond 
 this. Similarly in Male (Malabar, perhaps more particularly 
 Quilon, which was later known by the Arabs as Kullam-male), 
 where pepper grows, and in the place called Caliana (Kalyan, 
 near Bombay), there is also a bishop, who receives imposition of 
 
 ^ See Appendix E. 
 
 ^ Germann, Die Kirche der Tho?tiaschrisien, Gutersloh, 1877, p. 97. 
 
32 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 hands from Persia, etc." ^ This account is surprisingly defective 
 from an eye-witness and so experienced a traveller as Cosmas ; 
 but it is sufficient to show that Kalyan, Male, and Ceylon may 
 be regarded as the three chief centres of Christianity in India. 
 It is quite intelligible that the Bishop of Kalyan should at that 
 time have been in ecclesiastical dependence upon Persia, since 
 at the period Persian commerce (at the Persian Gulf) along the 
 west coast of India was extraordinarily active and was on the 
 point of driving that of Rome (by the Red Sea) out of the field. 
 Similarly the Christian community in Ceylon was preponderat- 
 ingly, if not exclusively, a community of Persian colonists, as 
 is evident from another incidental reference of Cosmas : " The 
 island of Ceylon possesses a Christian community of Persian 
 settlers, a presbyter and a deacon ordained in Persia, and a 
 complete ecclesiastical ministry." But the natives and their 
 kings are of another race and religion." ^ 
 
 Half a century later we find in the works of the credulous 
 Bishop Gregory of Tours (died 594 A.D.) the first obscure 
 reference to the great national shrine of the Indian Christians, 
 the sanctuaries of St. Thomas near Madras. Gregory bases his 
 statements on the testimony of a travelling Syrian monk, 
 Theodore, who professed to have been in Milapur (Peacock 
 City) ; but he does not yet mention the name of this city which 
 afterwards became so famous, and states, moreover, that the 
 remains of the Apostle Thomas had been conveyed to Edessa 
 and buried there. These shrines of St. Thomas at Milapur 
 sprang at once into the light of day by the discovery in 1547 of 
 the so-called " Thomas " Cross on the great hill of St. Thomas. 
 It consists of a fairly large stone on which is carved in relief a 
 cross of an antique shape. Hovering above it is the form of 
 a dove, the outlines of which are somewhat crudely chiselled ; 
 round the cross there runs an inscription which for centuries 
 was a puzzle to scholars. It was at length recognised by an 
 English Indologist, Dr. Burnell, as Pehlavi of the sixth or seventh 
 century, and deciphered. But the translation has not attained 
 unanimous acceptation. Dr. Burnell translates : " In punishment 
 by the cross was the suffering of this one who is the true 
 Christ God above and Guide ever pure." On the other hand, 
 another expert. Dr. Haug of Munich, translates : " He that 
 believes in the Messiah and in God in the height and also 
 in the Holy Ghost is in the grace of him who suffered the 
 pain of the cross." * 
 
 It is obvious that this cross must be the product of a 
 
 ^ Gallandius, Bibl. GrcEco-latina, Venice, 1788, xi. bk. iii. p. 449, D.E. 
 
 ^ " Kal irdaav tt]v (KKXricnacrTiKrjv \eiTovpyiav." 
 
 * iL\\6<pv\oi. ■* Germann, as before, pp. 297, 299. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 
 
 33 
 
 Christian church in early times, and that this church must have 
 been the centre of a Christian settlement. It is remarkable that 
 an exactly similar cross with precisely the same inscription in 
 the same Pehlavi characters has been found in a church at 
 Cottayam, in North Travancore. And there exists a third 
 similar cross in the same church at Cottayam. This last differs 
 from the two older crosses by having in a second panel above 
 the large cross a smaller one with two peacocks on each side. 
 Only the second part of the Pehlavi inscription is given, while 
 the first part has been replaced by a quotation from Gal. vi. 14 
 in the Syrian language. This third cross is probably several 
 centuries later than the other two. The statement of Cosmas 
 that the great Christian communities of South India were under 
 Persian influence, and were composed for the most part of 
 Persian colonists, seems to receive confirmation from these 
 Pehlavi inscriptions. It would further seem to be established 
 by the discovery of these crosses that at the period from which 
 they date there was also a centre of Christianity on the Coro- 
 mandel coast in what was later known as Milapur, and that this 
 community was ecclesiastically and linguistically homogeneous 
 with what later became the Syrian Church on the Malabar 
 coast. 
 
 Not very much later in date than the three crosses which 
 have been mentioned are the famous privilege tablets of the 
 Syrian Christians and Cochin Jews. In the year 1549 Mar 
 Jacobus, a venerable bishop of the Thomas Christians, entrusted 
 to the care of the Portuguese Governor of Cochin, Pedro de 
 Sequeira, several metal tablets as the most precious treasure 
 of his people. The Portuguese cared so little about the price- 
 less insignia that within a few decades the tablets were lost 
 and forgotten. They were rediscovered for the first time in 
 the year 1806 by the learned English chaplain, Dr. Claudius 
 Buchanan, with the help of the British Resident, Colonel 
 Macaulay. In the meantime a French scholar, Anquetil du 
 Perron, had in 1757 taken an exact facsimile of two other well- 
 preserved and very ancient copper tablets which were in the 
 possession of the Jewish community in Cochin. But the 
 characters, which were partly ancient Tamil, partly Chaldeo- 
 Pehlavi, partly Sassanian-Pehlavi, and partly Cufic, presented 
 the greatest difficulty in deciphering and translation. While 
 Tychsen, Dr. E. W. West, Dr. Burnell and Dr. Haug interpreted 
 the Pehlavi and Cufic inscriptions, it was Dr. Gundert, a 
 missionary of the Basle Society, who succeeded in deciphering 
 the greater part and the real text on the copper plates. They 
 have been discovered to represent three documents. The first, 
 a copper plate written on both sides in ancient Tamil characters, 
 3 
 
34 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 dates probably from the second half of the eighth century. 
 In it a certain king, Vira Raghava, conveys to the wholesale 
 merchant, Iravi Korttan of Kranganur, as head of the Christians, 
 and to his children and descendants, the lordship of Manigramam 
 (Pearl City), with all the marks of princely authority, and with 
 the title "Chief Merchant of Kerala" (Malabar), This was no 
 empty distinction, for it expressly included the oversight of the 
 four classes (of foreign merchants ?), and feudal rights over 
 the castes of the Wanier (oil-makers), and the five classes of the 
 Kammaler (artisans). Besides this, all customs dues of the 
 ships which entered the Kodungalur (Kranganur) River were to 
 belong to the Lord of Manigramam.^ The second document 
 consists of five copper plates of much smaller size with seven 
 pages in Tamil-Malayalam, and two pages of signatures in 
 different languages. In these Maruvan Sapir Iso conveys to 
 the community and church at Tarasapali, which had been built 
 by one " Iso Data Virai," a piece of land near the seacoast, along 
 with several families of different heathen castes. The lords of 
 Anjuvannam and Manigramam were appointed joint guardians 
 of this piece of land and of the church thus endowed. The 
 third document, consisting of the two tablets which were 
 discovered in Jewish possession, is probably the oldest of the 
 three, and contains the feudal deed of investiture relating to the 
 princedom of Anjuvannam, drawn up by the Perumal (ruler of 
 Malabar), Bhaskara Ravi Varma, in favour of Joseph Rabban, 
 in terms similar to those of the deed of gift of Iravi Korttan. 
 Although this latter document has been for long in Jewish 
 hands, there is nothing in the text which points to a Jewish 
 owner or feudal lord ; and the name of Joseph Rabban often 
 appears among the Syrian Christians in both earlier and later 
 times. Since it is improbable that a Jew should have been 
 appointed as guardian of a Christian church and the land 
 belonging to it, as the Lord of Anjuvannam is according to the 
 second document, it is more likely that this third document 
 also belonged originally to the Christians, and refers to the 
 investiture of a Christian. Without going into further details of 
 these interesting old records,^ we may call attention to a few of 
 the more important conclusions to be drawn from them. As 
 on the "Thomas" crosses, so here we find not yet Syrian, but 
 Persian names and characters in different styles of writing, Cufic, 
 Chaldeo-Pehlavi, and Sassanian-Pehlavi, such as were in use in 
 the Sassanian Empire (226-640 A.D.). The Christians appear as 
 distinguished merchant princes, who have concentrated in their 
 own hands a large part of the commerce of the Malabar coast 
 
 ^ See Appendix F. 
 
 - For which, cf. Germann, as above, pp. 225-271. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 35 
 
 (Kerala). Most important of all, they appear to have been 
 assigned comparatively high rank in the hide-bound caste 
 system of the south coast region, superior to that of the Waniers 
 and Kammalers, and as feudal lords to have been placed on a 
 level with the aristocracy of the country. The relatively high 
 position of the Syrian Christians in Travancore and Cochin up 
 to the present day obviously finds its explanation and basis in 
 these ancient documents. 
 
 For the dating of the second document, a deed of gift of 
 church lands, importance must be attached to the very clearly 
 defined tradition of the Thomas Christians, that in the year 
 823 (or 825) two Chaldean (Persian) priests. Mar Xabro and 
 Mar Prodh, landed in Malabar in the region of Quilon (Kullam) ; 
 they are reported to have received great privileges from the 
 king, and in particular to have obtained permission to build 
 churches where they chose — the king himself presenting the 
 sites — and to effect the conversion of any whom they could 
 persuade. The founding of the port of Quilon is assigned by 
 tradition to the year 825. Our second document, according to 
 this tradition, has to do with the privileges granted to the priests 
 Mar Xabro and Mar Prodh. This contention possesses con- 
 siderable probabilities ; for Maruvan Sapir Iso is probably 
 identical with this Mar Xabro (Maruvan = Mar ; Sapir = sapor, 
 Shapur, Xabro ; Iso = Jesus, a distinguishing mark of the man as 
 Christian). The decided preponderance of Persian influences on 
 the one hand and the progressive assimilation of the Christian 
 community to its Indian environment on the other is remarkably 
 confirmed by the form of several other names in the documents. 
 Iravi, related to the Hindu word Ravi = Sun, no longer permits 
 the Persian root-form to appear. The word Tarasapali, so 
 much fought over, seems to be formed from the modern Persian 
 " Tarsa," meaning Christ, and the Tamil word " Pali," meaning 
 place. The name of the recipient in the second document, 
 Iso Data, is identical with the present-day Jesudasen (servant 
 of Jesus). 
 
 The period which the discovery of these various more or less 
 contemporary inscriptions reveals to us, and which was obviously 
 one of great importance for the Indian Church, is illuminated by 
 only a very few meagre accounts in the writings of Western 
 authors. The Nestorian Patriarch of Seleucia, Jesu-Jabus of 
 Adiabene (650-660 A.D.), complains in a letter to the Persian 
 Metropolitan Simeon that through his fault the peoples of Great 
 India, which stretches from Persia to Quilon, are without 
 bishops. More than a century earlier, about 538 A.D., the 
 Abyssinians, Himyarites, and Indians, since they could obtain 
 from the Emperor Justinian no bishop congenial to them, who 
 
36 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 would repudiate the creed of Chalcedon, are said to have united 
 in consecrating a common bishop through the laying-on, not of 
 hands, but of a copy of the Gospels. If there is anything at 
 all in this mythical account, it is still highly improbable that 
 the churches of South India took part in the proceedings, since 
 at that period all their associations were with Persia, and not 
 with the neighbourhood of the Red Sea. On the other hand, it 
 appears to be certain that in the time of the Caliph Abd al 
 Malik (685-705 A.D.) the Indian churches, by a ruse, got Bishop 
 Theodore to consecrate for them a bishop belonging to the sect 
 of the Phantasiasts in Alexandria ; this man, however, never 
 reached India. In the year 760 India seems to have been 
 raised to an independent metropolitan under the Nestorian 
 Patriarch of Seleucia ; and in a synodal decree of the patriarch 
 Theodosius (852-858 A.D.) the metropolitans of China, India, 
 and Persia are referred to side by side, although their names 
 are not given. In 841 the Arab merchant Sulaiman wrote an 
 account of his frequent Indian travels. In these he mentions 
 the harbour of Batumah in South India; scholars suppose this 
 name to stand for Beit Tumah, the house of Thomas, refer it 
 to Milapur, and conclude that the sanctity of the shrines of 
 St. Thomas was so little disputed at that period in South India 
 that the much frequented harbour of Milapur took its name 
 from them. In the year 883 the gifted and far-seeing King 
 of England, Alfred the Great, sent the two priests Sighelm and 
 Athelstan to India via Rome, to carry the votive offerings which 
 he had promised to St. Thomas during the siege of London. 
 The two ambassadors seem to have returned safely from their 
 long journey, but of their experiences we unfortunately know 
 nothing. 
 
 The relations of India with the West, which had never been 
 very extensive, were almost entirely severed in consequence of 
 the Arab conquest, and the rise of the great Muhammadan 
 Empire from 632 A.D. onwards. And similarly the circum- 
 stances of the Christians of India, after a short season of 
 prosperity, seem to have changed for the worse. All that we 
 know is based upon the uncertain oral and written traditions 
 which were current among the Thomas Christians as late as 
 the beginning of last century. Whitehouse, a trustworthy 
 authority, in his '' Lingerings of Light in a Dark Land" sums 
 them up as follows: "In the third century a certain sorcerer, 
 Manikka Vasagar, arrived in the Chola country (on the east 
 coast of India), and having deceived and perverted many Chris- 
 tians by his wiles, and sown the seeds of heresy among them, 
 found his way round by land to the Malayalam country. At 
 that time there were many Christians settled in the southern 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 37 
 
 part of Travancore, between Quilon and Kottar, and in this 
 district he laboured, and by his pretended miracles obtained 
 much the same influence over them that Simon Magus did 
 over the people of Samaria. If any one was taken with serious 
 illness, or there was disease among their cattle, the sorcerer was 
 sent for to breathe over them or mutter his charms and apply 
 his sacred ashes. He taught them to use mantra or cabalistic 
 sentences in verse, and also assured them that if they partook 
 of a mixture composed of the five products of the cow, they 
 would find it a specific for all kinds of sickness, and secure long 
 life to themselves. Eight families were perverted by him, and 
 these so far increased as to form at length a community of 
 ninety-six houses." The more usual form of the tradition is that 
 ninety-six families fell away, and that only eight, the so-called 
 Dhareyaygul, or Confessors, remained true to the Christian faith. 
 In all probability this story refers to the appearance of the Saivite 
 poet and philosopher Manikka Vasagar, who prepared the way 
 for the overthrowof Buddhism and the restoration of Brahmanism, 
 which after a fierce and bloody struggle was carried out in the 
 ninth century. The activity of Manikka Vasagar is variously 
 assigned to a period between 500 and 800 A.D. It would appear 
 that the movement directed against the Buddhists affected the 
 Christian communities as well. Whether Christianity had 
 spread previously to that time along the Coromandel coast 
 outside of Milapur we do not know. In Southern Travancore 
 it was practically rooted out, with the exception of the still sur- 
 viving remnant of the Dhareyaygul, which is to be met with in 
 the ancient capital Travancore, and the new capital Trivandrum. 
 This unhappy remnant, in consequence of its severance from 
 the main body of Christians, has for centuries been badly 
 neglected, and has become addicted to heathen customs. 
 
 With regard to the four centuries which follow, from 850 to 
 1250, we know absolutely nothing. The Archimandrite Nilos 
 Doxopatrios (1143 A.D.) mentions in a controversial treatise 
 that besides Asia and Anatolia the Patriarch of Antioch had a 
 thorough knowledge of India also, whither he had previously 
 dispatched a Catholicos, ordained by himself, who took his 
 title from Romogyris (Ramagiri, i.e. Rama's Mountain ?). 
 We know nothing of cither Ramogyris or of this Catholicos, 
 In the year 1122 there appeared in Rome a person who pro- 
 fessed to be the Indian patriarch John, who told the most 
 incredible tales about the church of St. Thomas in Milapur, 
 and thereby caused great amazement to the credulous Pope 
 and his cardinals. He appears to have been an impostor who 
 had obtained in Syria a confused account of the shrines of the 
 Indian Christians. 
 
38 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 (b) The First Missionaries from Rome ^ 
 
 About the middle of the thirteenth century the veil of dark- 
 ness which for five hundred years had hidden Eastern Asia 
 from the eyes of Europe was rent asunder. The Emperor of 
 Mongolia, Jhengiz Khan, and his successors built up their 
 mighty empire in the East, and were far-seeing and unprejudiced 
 enough to establish communications with the West, even though 
 these proved, in the long-run, only sporadic. Within the pale 
 of Christendom the two great missionary Orders of the Middle 
 Ages, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, were at that time 
 just in the pristine vigour of their strength, and afforded the 
 Popes fitting messengers for the carrying out of ecclesiastical 
 and political missions in far and unknown lands. In the course 
 of relations with China a certain amount of missionary activity 
 fell to the lot of India, even though the latter country was regarded 
 merely as a kind of half-way house on the journey to the Far East. 
 
 The famous traveller, Marco Polo, who travelled in the 
 East from 1270 to 1295, was the first to bring a moderately 
 trustworthy account of India to the ears of Europe. He had 
 been twice to the East Indies, once as commander of several 
 ships belonging to Kubla Khan, and then again as commander 
 of a Chinese fleet escorting a Mongolian princess to Persia. 
 Concerning by far the most important Christian church of the 
 East, the Syrian Church in Malabar, he seems to have heard 
 practically nothing; he merely says concerning it: "In the 
 kingdom of Quilon (Travancore) dwell many Christians and 
 Jews who still retain their own language." Nor does he seem to 
 have himself been in Milapur, but he has heard much about it. 
 The south-eastern portion of India, the Tamil country, is called 
 by him, and by the subsequent Christian writers of the next cen- 
 tury, Maabar. From the confusion of this curious name with 
 that of the west coast Malabar, probably arose the custom of 
 calling the Tamils "Malabars" and their language "Malabar," 
 which prevailed during the whole of the eighteenth century, 
 even amongst Protestant missionaries. Polo writes : " In the 
 province of Maabar lies the body of the glorious martyr, St. 
 Thomas the Apostle, who suffered martyrdom there. He rests 
 in a little town which is visited by few merchants because of its 
 insignificant commerce, but a great multitude of Christians and 
 Saracens make pilgrimages thither. . . . The Christians who 
 go there on pilgrimage gather earth from the spot on which he 
 was struck down ; it is red in colour, and they carry it thence 
 with every mark of reverence ; later on they frequently use it 
 for working miracles, and dissolving it in water, they give it 
 ^ See Appendix G. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 39 
 
 to the sick, whereby many an infirmity is cured. . . . Many 
 miracles are wrought there every day through the agency of the 
 blessed saint. The Christians upon whom devolves the care of 
 the church possess groves of the trees which bear Indian nuts 
 (cocoa-nut palms), and from these they draw their means of 
 subsistence. As tribute they pay one of the royal Brethren one 
 groat per month for every tree." And then he goes on to relate 
 the then universally accepted legend of the martyrdom of 
 Thomas. Clearly the shrines of St. Thomas at Milapur were 
 at that time the most celebrated pilgrim resorts amongst Indian 
 Christians, and in their immediate neighbourhood there still 
 existed a not inconsiderable community of Christians — an oasis 
 in the midst of vast heathen deserts. 
 
 Almost contemporary with Marco Polo, the Franciscan, 
 John of Monte Corvino, afterwards Archbishop of Peking- 
 Kambulac, passed thirteen months in South India (i 292-1 293). 
 Unfortunately we know almost nothing of his work there. He 
 writes : " I came to India and spent thirteen months in that 
 province where the church of the holy Apostle Thomas is ; at 
 different places in that province I baptized some hundred per- 
 sons ; my companion was Brother Nicolo de Pistorio of the 
 order of the Preaching Friars."^ This Dominican, Nicholas 
 of Pistoja, must have died soon after. 
 
 About 1 3 10 a third friar, Menentillus, was in India for a 
 short time; in his letters, which have been published in the 
 Gelehrten Anzeigen dcr Milnchener Akadcmie (1855, vol. xl. 
 nos. 21 and 22), we find only one passage of interest to us: 
 " Christians and Jews there are (in the coast districts of India ?), 
 but they are few and of no high standing. Christians and all 
 who have Christian names are often persecuted." 
 
 A decade later the first organised (?) missionary work on 
 the part of the Roman Catholics was commenced. About the 
 year 13 19 a number of Dominicans and Franciscans had left 
 Avignon, then the seat of the Popes, for the Far East, and had 
 preached without any considerable success in all the towns 
 between Tabris and Ormuz. At the latter place they struck 
 a bargain with a ship about to sail for the church of St. 
 Thomas ; but owing to the treachery of the sailors a number 
 of the monks found themselves separated from the main body 
 on the small island of Diu. The Dominican Jordan, and the 
 four Franciscans, Thomas of Tolentino, James of Padua, 
 Demetrius of Tiflis, and Peter of Siena, succeeded in crossing 
 to Thana, on the island of Salsette (near the modern Bombay). 
 There they found fifteen Nestorian households, and heard that 
 in Supera (Sefer) and Paroth (Broach) there were also many 
 
 ^ See Appendix H. 
 
40 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Christians living, though they were Christians rather in name 
 than in reaUty, since, owing to their lack of teaching, they did 
 not know what they ought to believe. Jordan records that 
 they knew so little of Christianity that they confused Christ 
 with the Apostle Thomas ; furthermore, that in quite recent 
 times the communities had been terribly decimated by the 
 " Saracens," and many churches transformed into mosques. 
 This was the time of the Islamic invasion and conquest of 
 North-West India. Whitehouse, in the book quoted above, 
 states that even in the middle of the nineteenth century a 
 Government official, whilst land-surveying on the west coast of 
 India to the north-west of Bombay, came across one or two 
 isolated colonies of Nestorian Christians near the seacoast, 
 weak in numbers, poor and wholly ignorant. (Cf. also Germann, 
 as above, p. 5, note.) This is the region of the ancient see of 
 Caliana (Kalyan) already mentioned by Cosmas Indicopleustes, 
 in which, therefore, during the seven hundred years that we 
 have heard nothing about them, communities of no inconsider- 
 able size must have preserved at least a nominal Christianity. 
 Jordan at once continued his journey to Supera and Broach 
 in order to inquire into the state of the believers there. In 
 the meantime the four brethren left behind in Thana became 
 involved in disputes with the fanatical Muhammadans concern- 
 ing the Deity of Christ and the prophetic office of Muhammad, 
 and whilst they were confessing their faith three of them were 
 fallen upon by armed men on Maundy Thursday, and beheaded 
 under a tree (1321). The Kadi thereupon sent men to seize 
 their baggage, and the fourth, Peter, was taken prisoner, and 
 put to death with great torture on Good Friday. Thus did 
 Romish missions in India commence with a martyrdom, and we 
 are fortunate enough to possess two letters in which Jordan 
 gives exact particulars of the facts of the case. 
 
 Jordan seems to have remained two years in India after 
 the tragic death of his companions. He boasts of having 
 baptized and brought into the faith close on three hundred. 
 When in another place he gives the number of those baptized 
 as only one hundred and thirty, we may suppose that the rest 
 were Nestorians whom he brought into the fold of Rome. He 
 then returned for a time to Furope. In 1328 he was conse- 
 crated Bishop of Ouilon by Pope John XXII., obviously with 
 special regard to the Thomas Christians in the south, amongst 
 whom he was to labour on behalf of the Romish Church. 
 Most probably he returned to India in 1330, and worked for 
 some years in the south of the country on the Malabar coast. 
 Unfortunately that is all we know about his labours, save that 
 in a general report of his work he states that with his 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 41 
 
 companions the Franciscans and Dominicans he had won over 
 to the faith ten thousand schismatics (these must be Thomas 
 Christians) and unbeh'evers, and that so far as his experience 
 went he had found them ten times better and more loving than 
 European Christians. He says tliat if he had had from two to 
 three hundred faithful missionaries, less than a year would 
 have been needed to convert over ten thousand people. 
 Because of the limited numbers of his assistants they were 
 unable to visit many districts. On the other hand, the emis- 
 saries of Islam speedily overran the entire Orient. They were 
 the greatest foes and persecutors of Christian missionaries, and 
 during his time of office alone had cruelly put to death five 
 Dominicans and four Minorites. Jordan returned afterwards 
 to Europe, but we know neither when nor why. 
 
 About the same time, apparently, two other Europeans 
 visited India — Odoric (Odoricus) of Portenau in Friaul (who 
 died in 1331), and the adventurous knight, Sir John Mandeville, 
 who appropriated Odoric's narrative, and gave it a truly 
 fabulous colouring. Odoric went through Thana, visited the 
 sepulchre of the martyrs, opened it and placed the remains in 
 handsome chests in order to convey them to a Franciscan 
 mission station in Upper India. On the journey thither (his 
 destination was probably Seitoon in China) he touched at 
 the Malabar ports of Flandrina (the Muhammadan Fanderina) 
 and Cyncilim (Singlatz or Gincalam, or, according to South 
 Indian tradition, Kranganur). That which interests us more 
 especially is what Odoric and Mandeville have to say of a 
 reliable nature concerning the Christian communities. Christians 
 and Jews apparently live at Flandrina ; they are frequently at 
 war ; the Christians, however, are always victorious. Further- 
 more, at Singlatz (Kranganur) and Sarche (Sachee, Barchen, or 
 probably Saimur or Saighar is meant) reside many Jews, 
 faithful Christians, and Mendynantes (mendicant friars?).^ 
 Both travellers then conduct us in ten days to the kingdom of 
 Mobaron, Marco Polo's Maabar. There, in a church at one of 
 the many towns of those parts, rests the body of St. Thomas. 
 This church is full of idols. Round about it in fifteen houses 
 dwell numbers of Nestorian monks, recreant Christians, and 
 schismatics. Mandeville then proceeds to relate many wonder- 
 ful things about the grave of St. Thomas ; amongst others he 
 makes the remarkable statement that, although as a matter of 
 fact the Syrians had translated St. Thomas' body to Edessa, 
 yet at a later period it had been brought back to India — a 
 proof of the way in which even then the old Christian traditions 
 wrestled with the later Indian one for the mastery. 
 
 ^ See Appendix I. 
 
42 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 The Papal Nuncio, John of Marignola, on returning from 
 China, spent the years 1 348-1 350 in India, He arrived in 
 Ouilon at Easter, 1348, and passed thirteen months in Malabar. 
 Pepper was the principal article of export, and the Thomas 
 Christians, who enjoyed a monopoly in it, levied an export 
 duty on every pound sent out of the country. From this 
 income they were able, strangely enough, to contribute to the 
 Papal Legate, at first one hundred gold fanams per month, 
 and later one thousand ! Marignola lodged at the Latin 
 church of St. George, and he had it decorated with valuable 
 paintings. At his departure he boasted of having brought to 
 completion many glorious projects, but what these were we 
 are unfortunately not told. He travelled southwards by land 
 to Cape Comorin, where he caused a most grotesque rite to 
 be celebrated. On the promontory he erected a marble pillar 
 on top of which, in the presence of innumerable crowds of 
 spectators, he placed a stone cross, anointed it with oil, con- 
 secrated and blessed it. From thence he journeyed to the 
 Maldive Islands, where at that time there were also Christians 
 residing. Here too he was received — if he is not drawing the 
 long bow — with remarkable honours by the Princess, or the 
 " far-famed Queen of Sheba," as the fanciful prelate expresses 
 it. Then he visited Ceylon, where he was thrown into durance 
 vile for four months ; but in spite of this long detention, and 
 many speculations on the subject of Paradise, Adam's House, 
 and Adam's Peak, he was unable to learn anything concerning 
 the Christian church on the island in preceding centuries. 
 Released from his imprisonment, he travelled as quickly as 
 possible to the Thomas shrines at Milapur, where, however, he 
 remained but four days. He calls Milapur Mirapolis. One of 
 the churches which he found there he believes to have been 
 built by Thomas himself, the others by his orders. Of course 
 he narrates the legend of Thomas being shot to death by an 
 arrow. " Many miracles are wrought upon Christians, Tartars, 
 and heathens, by the blood-besprinkled ground, and also by 
 draughts of water from a certain magic spring"; in fact, 
 Marignola claims to have experienced in propria persond 
 one such miracle, but unfortunately he forgets to describe it. 
 The only other thing we are told is that close by the very 
 beautiful church of St. Thomas there lay a small vineyard. 
 Marignola returned to Europe via Nineveh, Damascus, and 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 With this we come to the end of this short period of 
 Roman Catholic missions ; indeed, it is hardly to be termed 
 a missionary period, for of actual missionary work we read 
 absolutely nothing. We may, however, read between the lines 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 43 
 
 of the few scattered narratives that the Franciscans were even 
 then trying to establish themselves in force amongst the 
 Thomas Christians in the neighbourhood of Quilon — Jordan's 
 10,000 converts, the " Companions " of this first Roman Catholic 
 Bishop of Quilon, the Latin church of St. George, and so on, 
 all pointing in this same direction. 
 
 With 1350 all our information again comes to an end for a 
 century and a half. Roman Catholic missions in China likewise 
 terminate with the fall of the Mongolian dynasty, and the 
 death of the last Archbishop of Peking, William of Prato, in 
 1370. In 1449 the Venetian renegade, Nicolo de Conti, returned 
 to Rome from his adventurous travels in the East ; he related 
 thatlin Milapur, a town of one thousand hearths, the body of 
 St. Thomas " reposes honourably in a large and beautiful church, 
 close to which dwell a number of Nestorian Christians, who are 
 also found disseminated all over India, just as Jews are found 
 in Europe." That is the only mention of Indian Christianity, 
 and an incomplete one to boot, during the fifteenth century. 
 
 For twelve whole centuries slight traces of Christian influence 
 upon India can be detected, but any direct information thereon 
 is unfortunately but as a vanishing echo from afar. Had not the 
 discovery of a sea-route to India brought news of the existence 
 of a large Indian church in Malabar and of very ancient Christian 
 pilgrim shrines at Milapur, we should have been unable out of 
 these scattered notices to construct any idea of the extent 
 of Christian activity during these centuries. 
 
 It has been asked whether Christian thought has therefore left 
 no impression upon the Hindu mind, so susceptible to religious 
 influences, and whether traces of some such impression are not 
 to be found in the literature or traditions of India. In the 
 twelfth book of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata, a " white 
 island " (Svetadvipa) is spoken of, which is said to lie off the 
 northern shores of the Milky Sea, this latter being situated in 
 a northerly direction from Meru, " the Mountain of the Gods " ; 
 the inhabitants of this island are white, and glittering as the 
 moonlight. Because of their religious views they are named 
 " ekantinas," or monotheists. The source of true knowledge for 
 them is said to be " devajaga," a sinking of themselves in the 
 contemplation of God. They adore one sole and invisible God, 
 " Narayana," to whom they often softly murmur prayers in the 
 spirit. They are endowed with the most marvellous faith 
 (bhakti). Only in the second age of the world would the men 
 to whom had been communicated the doctrine of an invisible 
 Divine Being take part in the final accomplishment of the work 
 of God. 
 
 This is clearly an echo of Christian teaching, which had 
 
44 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 somehow come to the knowledge of the sacred singer. Dr. 
 Lorinscr, a German OrientaHst, claims to be able to point out in 
 theBhagavadGita,one of the most beautiful and profound sections 
 of the same Mahabharata, more than a hundred passages which 
 are reminiscent of the New Testament. Other scholars, however, 
 who have tested Lorinser's conjectures are unable to find any 
 direct and certain connection between the two. An attempt has 
 been made to trace strong Christian influence in the whole trend 
 of Vaishnavism during the Middle Ages, emphasising as it does 
 faith (bhakti) and union with God. But these questions are too 
 complicated, and as yet too hypothetical, for us here to give any 
 brief account of them. In this difficult branch of knowledge 
 the region of conjecture has not yet been passed. 
 
 2. From the Landing of the Portuguese to the 
 Advent of Protestant Missions 
 
 (a) i4.g8-JS4-2 
 
 In May 1487 the wise and enterprising King of Portugal, 
 Joao II., dispatched two ambassadors to the East with instruc- 
 tions to reach India by land and to obtain information with 
 regard to a possible sea-route thither. One of these ambassadors, 
 Pedro de Covilhas, took ship from Arabia to Malabar, and soon 
 sent back valuable information for the king his master. Acting 
 on this, Vasco da Gama sailed for India in 1497 at the head of 
 a Portuguese fleet, and landed at Calicut on May 9th, 1498. 
 This journey completed that union of the lands of the West and 
 of India which had been sought for in vain for so many long 
 centuries, and it marks the advent of a new epoch, an epoch 
 of Roman Catholic missions in India. The Portuguese King 
 Manuel l.^ (1495-1521), and much more his bigoted successor, 
 Joao III. (1521-1557), deemed it their mostsacred duty, together 
 with colonial conquest and exploitation, to plant Christianity 
 — of course of the Romish type — in the newly discovered and 
 inestimably vast regions of the East and of the West. The two 
 missionary Orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, com- 
 posed for purposes of this kind an imposing army of combatants, 
 and many secular clergy joined their ranks. Even on board the 
 second Portuguese fleet for India, which sailed under Cabral 
 in 1500, hosts of monks destined for missionary service were dis- 
 patched, and by nearly every ship bound thither after that their 
 numbers were augmented. Goa became at once the centre of 
 an ecclesiastical hierarchy and of a great colonial empire. In 
 1534 it was raised to the dignity of a bishopric and placed under 
 ^ See Appendix J. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 45 
 
 the charge of Bishop Joao de Albuquerque (1533-1553; the 
 see was unoccupied from 1 5 53 to 1 560). After his death Goa was 
 made an archbishopric in 1557, and the Archbishops Caspar de 
 Leam Pereira (1560), Vincent da Fonseca (1585), Matthew of 
 Medina (1590), and in an especial degree Alexio de Menezes 
 (1594), endowed it with increasing splendour. Other bases of 
 the Portuguese naval supremacy, such as Ormuz, Mozambique, 
 etc., were also provided with churches and monasteries, secular 
 clergy and monks. In this direction the Franciscans were par- 
 ticularly energetic, building monasteries at Goa, Cochin, Diu, 
 Bassein, Shaul, Salsette, and other places. As the Portuguese 
 encouraged intermarriages between their soldiers and sailors and 
 native women, and baptized their frequently illegitimate offspring 
 without inquiry, and as furthermore they encouraged and re- 
 warded in every possible way the embracing of Christianity 
 by the natives, there soon grew up, especially around Goa, a 
 not inconsiderable church of nominal Christians — whose moral 
 condition it must be admitted was generally deplorable, and who 
 reflected little honour upon the faith they professed. The first 
 forty years of Portuguese Catholic missions are, however, poor 
 in noteworthy events or success, if we except the mysterious 
 baptism of a Rajah of Tanore, on the Malabar coast. The 
 first star of magnitude which arose in the sky of that mission 
 was Francisco Xavier. The day he set foot on Indian soil, 
 May 6th, 1542, is the birthday of Roman Catholic missionary 
 activity in India on a large scale. 
 
 (b) Francisco Xavier'^ 
 
 Francisco Xavier, who was born on April 7th, 1506, in the 
 castle of Xavier, Navarre, came of a noble family and was 
 related on his mother's side to the royal house of Navarre and 
 to the Bourbons. He was gifted with penetrating intelligence 
 and a generous disposition, and received an excellent education 
 in theology and philosophy. An intimate friend of Ignacio 
 Loyola, he assisted him in founding the Order of the Jesuits on 
 September 27th, 1 540. The headquarters of Portuguese rule in 
 India was, as we have already said, Goa. The Bishop of Goa, 
 and later the Archbishop, had sent out clergy to the Molucca 
 Islands, to the Malay Peninsula, to Travancore and the 
 Coromandel coast, to Diu on the peninsula of Gujarat, to 
 Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, to Sofala and Mozambique — in short, 
 to all the Portuguese possessions in the Indian seas. On the 
 island of Ceylon there were also a few missionaries. But the 
 zealous King Joao III. of Portugal was far from satisfied with 
 1 See Appendix G. 
 
46 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the progress hitherto made by Christianity. His principal 
 adviser, Joao Gavan, directed his attention to the founder of 
 the Order of the Jesuits, and induced him to request the sei-vices 
 of this entire Order, as far as possible, for Indian mission work. 
 Loyola, however, did not approve of the migration of his whole 
 Order to India : he chose only two men for the purpose, and 
 those two, Simon Rodriguez and Nicolas Bobadilla, precisely the 
 weakest of its members. It was only when obstacles arose in 
 the way of their departure that he allowed Francisco Xavier to 
 replace them and to sail for India. 
 
 Beyond all manner of doubt Xavier towered head and 
 shoulders above all other Europeans then dwelling in India 
 or Eastern Asia — merchants and public officials as well as 
 missionaries and priests — both in the thoroughness of his 
 scholarship, the earnestness and fervour of his unquestionable 
 piety, the consuming ardour of his work, his boundless self- 
 denial and self-mortification, and his undissembled love of the 
 truth. But these remarkable qualities, which show Xavier to 
 have been indeed a great man, can only be truly discerned when 
 they are disinterred from the mountain of rubbish in the shape 
 of superstitious legends and imaginary and highly magnified 
 fables, under which his Jesuit biographers and their successors 
 have buried the picture of his life. Happily this is still possible 
 for the seeker after truth, owing to the extensive and indubit- 
 ably genuine correspondence of Xavier, by means of which we 
 are enabled to obtain a distinct view of his real personality. 
 The miracles his admirers have attributed to him are frequently 
 quite insipid and ridiculous. Amongst the ten miracles set 
 down in the Canon, there occurs, for instance, the following 
 incredible story : " The saint was one day sailing from Amboyna 
 to Baranula, in the Moluccas. During a storm he held his 
 crucifix'a few inches below the surface of the water. By some 
 means or other it slipped out of his hand into the sea and was 
 lost. On the following day he reached Baranula, and set out for 
 the town of Tamalo. Before he had gone five hundred paces a 
 crab sprang out of the sea, ran up to Xavier holding the crucifix 
 in its claws, stood quietly before him waiting until he had taken 
 the crucifix, and then went back into the water." Although 
 the same record attributes to him the restoration of three corpses, 
 nevertheless in connection with that case of the three for which 
 there is comparatively the best evidence, one of his biographers 
 places the following words in his mouth : " Holy Jesus ! I, wake 
 the dead ? Alas ! who am I to perform such deeds ? They 
 brought a young man to me who was apparently dead, and 
 when I ordered him in the name of Jesus to stand up, he did so. 
 And that appeared to them all to be something wonderful," 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 47 
 
 In Xavier's letters there is not the slightest mention of any of 
 these legendary miracles ; we are therefore fully justified, in the 
 cause of truth, in taking no cognisance of any of them, we 
 are even bound to do so. 
 
 This is the more necessary, since it is only after the removal 
 of this artificial veneer of gold that we are able to form any 
 judgment on Xavier's work as a missionary. The first thing 
 that strikes us in connection with that work is its brevity. 
 Xavier landed at Goa in May 1542, and died on December 2nd, 
 1552, i.e. only ten years later, on the island of Sanzian, near 
 Canton. And in this short decade he had by no means worked 
 only in India; his "pioneer" labours in what is now Dutch 
 Further India, in Japan, and in China were carried on during 
 this same period. A simple calculation is enough to show 
 that he can only have passed a comparatively insignificant 
 amount of time in each of these great mission fields. As a 
 matter of fact his longest period of consecutive work in India 
 was about two years and a half (May 1542-December 1544), 
 and if we include two flying visits paid later on (January 1548- 
 April 1549, and January-April 1552), the sum total of his time 
 there comes at the most to no more than four and a half years. 
 This is without question surprisingly little for a man whom it is 
 the custom to call the "Apostle of India"; it makes us a trifle 
 suspicious of this high-sounding title. Our hesitation is increased 
 after a consideration of his missionary methods, concerning 
 which he expresses himself freely enough in his letters. 
 
 Xavier never learnt the language of any of the lands he 
 visited, least of all one of the Indian tongues. He carried on 
 his work by means of interpreters, and helped himself out 
 of his difficulties by the most defective methods. Let us 
 hear what he himself says on the matter: "It is a difficult 
 situation to find oneself in the midst of a people of strange 
 language without an interpreter. Rodriguez tries, it is true, to 
 act in that capacity, but he understands very little Portuguese. 
 So you can imagine the life I lead here, and what my sermons 
 are like, when neither the people can understand the interpreter, 
 nor the interpreter the preacher, to wit, myself. I ought to be a 
 pastmaster in the language of dumb show. Nevertheless, I am 
 not altogether idle, for I need no translator's help in the baptism 
 of newly-born children." In another letter he continues : "As 
 they were as unable to understand my speech as I theirs, I 
 picked out from the crowd several intelligent and educated men 
 and endeavoured to find some amongst them who understood 
 both languages — Spanish and Malabarese (sic Tamil). Then 
 we entered into conference for several days, and together trans- 
 lated, though with great difficulty, the Catechism into the 
 
48 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Malabarese (? Tamil) tongue." How faulty this translation was 
 is strikingly illustrated by a complaint casually made by 
 Xavier, that in the Creed the Christians had learnt " I want" in 
 place of " I believe," and continued thoughtlessly to repeat it. 
 
 Christian ideas for the expression of which no Tamil words 
 were immediately forthcoming were simply denoted by the 
 Spanish words — confession with "confessio," Holy Spirit with 
 " Espiritu Santo," etc. — in any case, a course of procedure not 
 making for intelligibility. These faulty translations Francisco 
 Xavier learnt by heart, and then by reciting them impressed 
 them upon the memories and hearts of the people. 
 
 We may reasonably question whether with an equipment 
 of this imperfect nature — an equipment of which every present- 
 day missionary would be ashamed — any more deeply spiritual 
 missionary activity were possible to him. Xavier came as the 
 recognised friend and favourite of King Joao III., had been 
 entrusted by him with far-reaching powers, and kept in constant 
 touch with him by means of a regular and intimate corre- 
 spondence. In addition to all this, he arrived in India in the 
 company of the new Viceroy, Alfonso da Suza. This powerful 
 royal protection, the possibility of ever setting in motion the 
 strong arm of power for his own ends, and the respect assured 
 to him by this confidential position from all Portuguese 
 governors and officials, gained for him from the very beginning 
 a unique position. For the first five months he resided in Goa. 
 A great institution, the College of St. Paul, was at that time 
 being erected there at the cost of the State ; in this college 
 loo natives gathered from all the Portuguese settlements in 
 India were to be instructed in the Christian faith, that later 
 on they might return as preachers amongst their own people. 
 A Franciscan, Jacques Bourbon, was appointed Principal of 
 the college. It was one of Xavier's first endeavours to secure 
 the administration of this richly endowed institution for his own 
 Order. In a few years' time his powerful influence succeeded 
 in accomplishing this also ; Paul Camerte, a member of the 
 Society of Jesus, was created Director. With the possession 
 of this institution the Jesuits obtained their first foothold in 
 India; it soon became the headquarters of their Indian 
 missionary work. 
 
 Xavier had in the meantime turned his attention to the far 
 south of India. Between Cape Comorin and Ramnad there 
 lived the semi-independent but very low-caste Paravas, fishers 
 by trade. At this time they were so sorely oppressed by 
 Mohammedan pirates that they were forced to attempt to 
 defend themselves from their oppressors in a series of sanguinary 
 rebellions. Threatened at length in their very existence, they 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 49 
 
 appealed to the Portuguese for help through the mediation 
 of a wealthy countryman of theirs, Juan a Cruce, who had 
 embraced Christianity and was now living in Goa ; they 
 promised in return to become Christians, and to acknowledge 
 the sovereignty of Portugal. This occurred in 1538, or four 
 years before Xavier landed. As their 85 deputies allowed 
 themselves to be baptized there and then in Goa as a proof 
 that they were in earnest about conversion to Christianity, a 
 fleet was sent to their assistance, and the whole caste was 
 baptized within a few weeks. There are said to have been 
 20,000 of such converts. No teacher remained there to in- 
 struct them. Thus we have here a characteristic example of 
 that remarkable but to all acquainted with the missionary 
 history of India, not infrequent phenomenon, of an entire caste 
 or section of a caste throwing itself into the arms of Christian 
 missions out of motives of worldly policy — in this case, in order 
 to gain political protection. The unhealthy and all too intimate 
 relations with the State in which missionary work found itself 
 meant just this — a thing impossible under the English rule 
 of to-day — that the power of the secular arm was at once 
 exercised on behalf of missionaries, in order that its own 
 worldly ends might be attained. 
 
 In the midst of this new movement Xavier soon found 
 himself, and he laboured in connection therewith for two whole 
 years; it is the crowning epoch of his Indian missionary work. 
 " He went from village to village, calling crowds of men and 
 boys together in a fitting place for instruction, by means of 
 a hand-bell. Within a month the boys had almost learned by 
 heart what he had recited to them, and they were then 
 enjoined to teach it to their parents, comrades, and neighbours. 
 On Sundays he assembled men and women, boys and girls, 
 in a consecrated building, into which they streamed with joyful 
 zeal. The service simply consisted in his repeating once more, 
 very clearly, the aforesaid passages ; they were then repeated 
 by the congregation, the whole being interspersed with prayers 
 offered at regular intervals." ^ Whether any real understanding 
 of fundamental Christian truths was thereby attained, or whether 
 indeed Xavier could make what he said sufficiently com- 
 prehensible even to the Christians, owing to his incompetent 
 interpreters, cannot now be determined. It sometimes happened 
 that a whole village would be baptized in a single day, and 
 thirty villages were soon reckoned as belonging to the Christian 
 community. 
 
 In every village there was left a copy of the above-men- 
 tioned Christian compendium, and an overseer (Kanakkapillay) 
 
 ^ Hoffmann and Venn, Francis Xavier^ p. 135 et scq. 
 4 
 
so HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 appointed, whose duties were to instruct the rest, to administer 
 baptism in cases of emergency, and above all to repeat the 
 principal articles of belief in the hearing of the people on 
 holy days. 
 
 These overseers received a salary from the Portuguese 
 Treasury, Xavier acted very severely with regard to idol- 
 makers ; he had even gone so far as to obtain powers from 
 the King of Portugal entitling him to punish the making of 
 idols with the death penalty. He also threatened with fines 
 and imprisonment those who prepared palm wine, and still 
 more those who consumed it immoderately. That this pastoral 
 activity was an obvious Christian duty amongst the tens of 
 thousands who were now Christians in name goes without 
 saying ; but we cannot help a feeling of keen regret that only 
 one single individual gave himself up to it, that he did not 
 understand one of their languages, and that he did not take 
 the trouble to learn any. 
 
 The Paravas were soon to learn how advantageous their 
 Christianity was to them, and what a powerful protector they 
 possessed in Xavier. Dangerous quarrels were at that time 
 going on in South India, into which had been drawn more 
 particularly the kingdom of Madura, on the southern border of 
 which the Fisher coast lay. Wild bands of mercenaries, the 
 so-called Badagas (" Northmen ") fell upon the Christian villages, 
 settled down amongst them in the most cruel fashion, dispersed 
 the Christians, and caused them to suffer the severest privations. 
 As soon as Xavier heard of this, he loaded twenty cargo-boats 
 with provisions of every description, and hastened to the help of 
 the Christians ; and when contrary winds hindered the progress 
 of the boats, he strode forward for twenty hours over the hot 
 sand in order to comfort and to relieve them. He at once took 
 steps to guard against similar disaster in the future. He 
 procured boats, in which in case of danger the Christians 
 might at once rescue both themselves and their goods ; he 
 established a line of sentries to give due warning of the approach 
 of the Badagas ; he even bought a boat provided with cannon 
 for the defence of the Christian villages. In spite of all his 
 precautions, however, he could not hinder the Badagas from 
 breaking in upon them the following year, and driving even the 
 Portuguese Governor of Tuticorin into hasty flight. Xavier 
 thereupon dispatched his brother Jesuit Mansilla to the sorely 
 tried villages to console and to assist the poor Christians. It is 
 no wonder that such swift and potent helpfulness soon won their 
 hearts both to himself and to Christianity. 
 
 It was about this time that Xavier made a journey through 
 Travancore, which, however, can only have been of short 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 51 
 
 duration. During the journey he is said to have baptized 
 10,000 heathens in one month. This is the only case where 
 any actual figures are quoted in his letters, and Venn, his 
 Protestant biographer, suggests that even these were inserted 
 by a copyist. In his other letters Xavier merely writes of this 
 as being a time when he baptized "very many" heathen, in fact 
 " all the Mochas (fishermen) on the Travancore coast whom he 
 could possibly meet with." Whether these baptisms C7i viasse 
 were preceded by any kind of instruction we cannot learn ; the 
 only charge Xavier gives Mansilla is, " Build schools in every 
 village, that the children may be taught daily." 
 
 Xavier's own plans, however, had by this time undergone 
 considerable alteration. In the Jaffna district of Ceylon, which 
 lay just on the other side of the strait, disputes had arisen 
 between members of the reigning house. The heir apparent, 
 son of the king of those parts, had determined to become a 
 Christian, — probably in the expectation that the Portuguese 
 would then render him assistance, — but his father the king on 
 hearing of his project at once had him executed. 
 
 Now in the year 1543 the pearl fishers on the island of 
 Manar, who belonged to the same caste as the Parava fisher- 
 men on the adjacent mainland, had sent a deputation to Xavier 
 begging him to baptize them also. He had not actually been 
 able to go himself, but had sent another priest who baptized 
 them wholesale. When this came to the ears of the King of 
 Jaffna he caused all the converts to be mercilessly slaughtered 
 by his own adherents. At the news of such a massacre Xavier 
 hastened to the Portuguese Viceroy, and summoned him to 
 undertake a crusade against this persecuting king. An ex- 
 cellent plan was soon devised. An elder brother of the King of 
 Jaffna, who had a good claim to the throne, was now living on 
 the mainland in order to be safe from the possible plots of his 
 brother. This claimant promised to become a Christian and to 
 be baptized if the Portuguese would make him king in his 
 brother's stead. Xavier was full of sanguine hopes ; he wrote 
 at the time to Joao III.: "In Jaffna and on the opposite coast 
 I shall easily gain 100,000 adherents for the Church of Christ." 
 He hastened to Negapatam in 1544, in order to await there 
 the success of the projected crusade. But something wholly 
 unforeseen intervened, and for political reasons the entire crusade 
 fell to the ground. Whereupon Xavier altogether lost courage, 
 determined to leave India, and at the beginning of the year 
 1545 he proceeded to Further India, in order to obtain greater 
 and easier successes. And that is practically the close of his 
 work in India, a work not yet three years old. 
 
 It would be of interest to ascertain what numerical results — 
 
5 2 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 even if only superficial ones — he obtained. We have already 
 stated that they were limited almost exclusively to the fisher 
 castes resident on the extreme south coast and on the neighbour- 
 ing islands, and that these castes eagerly accepted Christianity, 
 because through the influence of the Portuguese or of Xavier 
 they were protected from powerful enemies, and their possession 
 of important material advantages, such as the monopoly of the 
 pearl fishery, was assured. There does not appear to have been 
 any question of religious motives in the matter from beginning 
 to end. The numerical returns of those baptized by Xavier or 
 during the time he was in India differ very widely. Padre 
 Brandonius, a well informed writer, sets them at merely 12,000 
 in 1554. Padre Caspar, General Superintendent of the Jesuits' 
 Indian Missions, estimates them at 60,000 in 1553, whilst 
 Padre P. L. Frois in 1560 speaks of 80,000. When the Jesuit, 
 A. Quadras, on his arrival in India in 1555, speaks of Xavier's 
 300,000 Christians, he is clearly writing from hearsay ; and when 
 Xavier's biographer Acosta, in 1570, also computes the number 
 of Indian Christians as 300,000, he expressly includes Goa, 
 where there were of course many Christians, and the Syrian 
 Christians of Cochin. Caspar is probably nearest the truth, but 
 from his estimate a round 20,000 must be subtracted ; those had 
 already been baptized when Xavier entered the field. 
 
 Xavier himself was wholly dissatisfied with this result of his 
 labours ; but he doubted whether greater success were possible 
 in India. In a letter to Ignacio Loyola in January 1549, he 
 writes: "The natives (of India) are so terribly wicked that they 
 can never be expected to embrace Christianity. It is so re- 
 pellent to them in every way that they have not even patience 
 to listen when we address them on the subject ; in fact, one 
 might just as well invite them to allow themselves to be put to 
 death as to become Christians. We must now therefore limit 
 ourselves to retaining those who are already Christians " (Hoff- 
 mann and Venn, p. 202). It was because of this disappointment 
 and doubt as to the power of simple preaching that there 
 developed in Xavier's ceaselessly active brain — at this time 
 intoxicated by his constant intercourse with the ruling classes — 
 the reckless plan of shifting the entire work of converting the 
 heathen from the shoulders of the missionaries to those of the 
 functionaries, viceroys, and governors. 
 
 The letter written in the year 1545, in which Xavier sketches 
 this plan to King Joao III., is one of the most forcible and 
 remarkable he ever wrote. In it he says : " I have discovered 
 a unique, but as I assuredly believe, a sure means of improving 
 this evil state of things, a means by which the number of 
 Christians in this land may without doubt be greatly in- 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 53 
 
 creased. It consists in your Majesty declaring, clearly and 
 decidedly, that you entrust your principal concern, to wit, the 
 propagation of our most holy faith, to the Viceroy and to all 
 the Deputy Governors in India, rather than to all the clergy 
 and priests. . . . To avoid all misunderstanding, your Majesty 
 would do well to indicate by name all those of us who are 
 working in India, and to explain in this connection that your 
 Majesty does not lay the responsibility on one or on a few or 
 on all of us . . . but that the dissemination of Christianity 
 shall in every case depend entirely upon the Viceroy or 
 Governor. It is your Majesty's highest duty and privilege to 
 care for the salvation of the souls of your subjects, and this 
 duty can only be devolved upon such persons as are your 
 Majesty's actual representatives and who enjoy the prestige 
 and respect ever accorded to those in authority. . . . Let your 
 Majesty therefore demand reports from the Viceroy or the 
 Governors concerning the numbers and quality of those heathen 
 who have been converted, and concerning the prospects of and 
 means adopted for increasing the number of converts. ... At 
 the appointment of every high official to the government of any 
 town or province, your Majesty's royal word should be most 
 solemnly pledged to the effect that if in that particular town 
 or province the number of native Christians were not con- 
 siderably increased, its ruler would meet with the severest 
 punishment ; for it is evident that there would be a far greater 
 number of converts, if only the officials earnestly desired it. 
 Yea, I demand that your Majesty shall swear a solemn oath 
 affirming that every Governor who shall neglect to disseminate 
 the knowledge of our most holy faith shall be punished on his 
 return to Portugal by a long term of imprisonment and by 
 confiscation of his goods, which shall then be disposed of for 
 charitable ends. ... I will content myself with assuring you 
 that if every Viceroy or Governor were convinced of the full 
 seriousness of such an oath, the whole of Ceylon, many kings 
 on the Malabar coast, and the whole of the Cape Comorin 
 district would embrace Christianity within a year. As long, 
 however, as the Viceroys and Governors are not forced by fear 
 of disfavour to gain adherents to Christianity, your Majesty need 
 not expect that any considerable success will attend the preaching 
 of the gospel in India, or that many baptisms will take place." 
 
 It was a kind of echo to such letters as the foregoing when 
 the king addressed the following decree to his Indian Viceroy : — 
 " My dear Viceroy, — That most essential duty(of a Christian 
 prince, namely, attention to the interests of religion and the 
 employment of one's entire influence in maintaining the 
 Catholic faith, moves us to issue the following order : That all 
 
54 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 idols shall be sought out and destroyed, and severe penalties 
 shall be laid upon all such as shall dare to make an idol . . . 
 or shall shelter or hide a Brahman." Later on in the same 
 letter the king commands that thorough financial and material 
 aid shall be afforded to the Christians, they are to be secured 
 against all compulsory service and oppression, special favour 
 is to be shown them in the filling of appointments, etc., " in 
 order that the natives may be inclined to submit themselves to 
 the yoke of Christianity," In this cry for State assistance we 
 can only discern a sorry example of the distortion and per- 
 version of the missionary ideal, and it is grievous to think of 
 even a Xavier being so shortsighted and so far from the real 
 spirit of the gospel. He was the founder of Jesuit missions, 
 which have been only too frequently and too extensively carried 
 on in this spirit. 
 
 Xavier returned to India in January 1548, and remained 
 for another fifteen months there, until April 1549; this 
 time, however, it was not to resume his simple mission work, 
 but to govern with unlimited authority the vast company 
 of Jesuit missionaries who had been sent out after him. In 
 1542, when he first landed in India, two brethren only of the 
 Order, Paul Camerte and Mansilla, had accompanied him. 
 But Joao III. and the Order saw to it that there was no lack 
 of reinforcements. In the year 1540, Xavier's friend, Simon 
 Rodriguez, had been appointed Principal of the College at 
 Coimbra in which one hundred, and afterwards two hundred 
 Jesuits were educated. This institution was for a long time 
 the main recruiting-ground of the Order of the Jesuits for 
 the Indian mission field. As early as 1548 Xavier had to 
 supervise over twenty Jesuit missionaries, and it soon became 
 evident that he possessed extraordinary powers as a ruler of 
 men. Besides innumerable long letters to King Joao and his 
 friends, both in Europe and in India, there are still extant five 
 very ample charges of his, and also a Guide to the Christian 
 Life, which has been translated into many languages. The 
 charges bear frequent witness to his great wisdom and to his 
 profound knowledge of the human heart. But if we come to 
 them seeking guidance about right methods of carrying on 
 missionary work amongst the heathen population of the country, 
 we shall be disappointed. Xavier's object in composing them 
 was rather to place his own Order in possession of the entire 
 Indian mission field and to oust all other Orders he had found 
 on the ground at his arrival, and more especially the Fran- 
 ciscans. We have already mentioned the fact that he had 
 obtained supreme control of the great College of St. Paul at 
 Goa for the Jesuits ; he attempted to do the same with the 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 55 
 
 Franciscan College at Kranganur, in Cochin ; and his efforts 
 were crowned with the accustomed success. And for the rest, 
 he stationed the brethren in the Order, who were to a man under 
 his direction and pledged to unconditional obedience, in all the 
 great centres of the Portuguese dominion, so that they might 
 ever be to the fore and might gain influence in every direction. 
 During the last years of his short life, however, his interests 
 were so largely confined to the Far East that the work in India 
 was left for the most part in the hands of his colleagues, 
 Camerte and Antonio Gomez. But they did not stand the 
 test. When in the spring of 1552, Xavier returned once more 
 to India for a few months, he found his hands at once full : 
 there were quarrels to pacify, unworthy members of the Order 
 to be expelled, men who had proved themselves unequal to their 
 appointed tasks to replace — in short, an entire revolution had 
 to be undertaken. The writing of numerous letters by means 
 of which he endeavoured to establish a new order of things 
 was the last service he rendered to the cause of Indian missions. 
 On December 2nd of that same year, he died on the island of 
 Sanzian, within sight of the Chinese coast. His body was 
 buried with magnificent pomp at Goa in 1554, and it is to day 
 one of the most valuable relics of Roman Catholic India. 
 Francisco Xavier was beatified in 161 9 by Pope Paul v., and 
 canonised in 1622 by Pope Gregory XV. He has become one 
 of the favourite saints, not only of the Order of the Jesuits, but 
 of the whole Romish Church. 
 
 (c) The Second Half of the Sixteenth Century 
 
 The missionary activity of the Roman Catholics during the 
 second half of the sixteenth century was almost entirely along 
 the lines which Xavier had marked out. Like most men of 
 commanding genius, he unites in himself the best thought and 
 aspirations of his age, as is seen by the fact that whilst the 
 missionary work of the Romish Church during the half-century 
 following his death affected a very much larger area, it never- 
 theless took scarcely one single step forward as regards inward 
 development, grasp of missionary problems, or understanding ot 
 missionary methods. That missionary enterprise everywhere 
 accompanies the Portuguese temporal power is characteristic of 
 the time. Missionary work in this period is merely one amongst 
 a number of efforts put forth by the State for the government of 
 the Indian colonies; and in return the State is ready and willing 
 to place its strong arm at the disposal of the missionaries to 
 assist them in the discharge of their religious task. What the 
 missionary party desired found its classical expression in the 
 
56 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Junta assembled in 1579 at Goa by the Viceroy of India at the 
 instance of the Portuguese sovereign, and which was composed 
 of clergy under the presidency of the Archbishop. The question 
 it had to decide was whether the natives in the Portuguese 
 colonies in India were to be allowed liberty in religious 
 observance. Its answer was " No," and thus it was admitted 
 that the carrying on of the Christianising process in the 
 Portuguese possessions was the common duty of the State and 
 of the Church. The most rapid and most thorough progress 
 was made in Goa, the main seat of Portuguese authority, and 
 the base of all its colonial projects. As early as 15 10, when the 
 Portuguese entered into possession of the town and island, 
 efforts had been made to create artificially a strong resident 
 Christian population ; even in 1546, King Joao III. had forbidden 
 " servants of Brahma " all public exercise of their religion, and 
 had commanded the destruction of idols. But in view of the 
 still unstable condition of the Portuguese dominion, and perhaps 
 for other reasons, the viceroys had always hesitated to use 
 force in the suppression of heathenism. After 1554 the Jesuits 
 made it their especial task to Christianise Goa and its immediate 
 neighbourhood. In 1557 they obtained from the Viceroy an 
 ordinance whereby all the lower official positions in the 
 Portuguese service were reserved for native Christians, who 
 were also to be favoured in many other ways. Especially were 
 all ceremonies connected with baptism to be observed in the 
 future with great pomp, and in the presence of the highest 
 officials in State and Church. By every means possible it was 
 to be brought home to those caste-bound Indians that the sole 
 means of social advancement was to accept the " Prangui 
 Koulam," or religion of the Franks.^ Prangui, an Indian 
 mispronunciation of Frank, i.e. Portuguese, became both in 
 Western and in Southern India the general appellation for the 
 native Christians, as well as for the ruling Portuguese. In such 
 hosts did the heathen in and around Goa now range themselves 
 on the side of Christianity, that in the year 1560 alone, at 
 twenty-seven brilliant baptismal ceremonies, 12,967 natives 
 were baptized. As early as 1563 — that is, barely ten years after 
 the Jesuits had made a serious commencement of their labours — 
 an order was received from King Sebastiao of Portugal, that all 
 " stiff-necked heathen " were to be banished from the Goa 
 territory. In the last decades of the century the Christianising 
 process had in the main been completed in this district, only a 
 few hundreds being baptized every year. 
 
 ^ The question in the Catechism, "Dost thou desire to become a Christian?" 
 was then worded: "Wilt thou enter the caste of the Prangui?" "To live the 
 Christian life" was termed " to live according to the manner of the Prangui." 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 57 
 
 This same process did not go on so smoothly at Salsette, a 
 peninsula stretching out some two or three miles south of Goa 
 (not to be confused with the island of the same name near 
 Bombay). In this district, the population of which at that time 
 numbered 80,000 souls, all missionary efforts up to the year 
 1560 had been well-nigh in vain — the people clung tenaciously 
 to heathenism. Then the Jesuits took up the work. In 1567 
 they persuaded the Viceroy to issue a decree ordering that " in 
 those districts of Goa which yet remain heathen, the pagodas 
 and mosques shall be pulled down, and orphans under fourteen 
 years of age shall be baptized." Immediately the Jesuit, 
 Ludwig Goes, set to work, with the help of the royal deputies 
 and of Portuguese troops, to destroy 280 large pagodas 
 and mosques and countless smaller ones. But he raised 
 thereby such grim hatred of the Jesuits that their lives were 
 frequently in danger; in 1583 a large number of them were put 
 to death, along with their escort, by the irritated heathen 
 populace. Still, Goa lay so near at hand that the propaganda 
 of the Jesuit fathers was able to benefit by the authority of the 
 ruling power, and every attempted rebellion could be easily 
 suppressed. In these circumstances " conversions " abounded. 
 In 1596 there were already about 35,000 Christians on Salsette. 
 The Brahmans and other high castes had migrated to the 
 adjoining kingdom of Bijapur. Amongst the lower classes that 
 remained the work of Christianisation went on practically without 
 opposition. The peninsula was divided into livings, and the Jesuits 
 as pastors ruled both parish and community with a strong hand. 
 
 The province of Goa, which to-day comprises only sixty-five 
 square miles of territory, is unique in India in the impression it 
 makes on a visitor as being a Catholic and Christian country. 
 " The Roman Catholic character of the country comes upon one 
 with most surprising effect in the midst of these heathen districts. 
 On every station platform one sees dark-robed monks and 
 priests. On every hillside there is a chapel, and scattered up 
 and down the fields and lanes are crucifixes and images of the 
 Virgin. In the larger towns and cities stately churches rear 
 their spires heavenward. Everywhere one encounters people 
 wearing rosaries and crucifixes on their breasts " {Basle Miss. 
 Mag., 1904, p. 464). It is estimated that at the present time 
 two-thirds of the 494,836 inhabitants, i.e. about 340,000, are 
 Roman Catholics. The missionary operations in Goa and its 
 neighbourhood are typical of the methods of the Jesuits during 
 this period. They acted in precisely similar fashion in the 
 other Portuguese colonies along the Indian coast: Bassein, 
 Shaul, Daman, and Diu, to the north of Goa ; at Cochin and 
 along the coast stretching therefrom to the south, the Fisher 
 
58 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 coast on the hither and the farther side of Cape Comorin, 
 where Xavier had previously laboured ; at Negapatam, Milapur, 
 in the Ganges Delta and in Arakan. But although the Jesuits 
 both as regards numbers, influence, and training easily took up 
 the commanding position, there were to be seen almost every- 
 where in addition the monasteries, churches, and schools of the 
 Franciscans, the Dominicans, and, after i572,of the Augustinians. 
 As far as the Portuguese influence extended, so far the wide- 
 meshed net of missionary enterprise was outspread — though it 
 must be granted that, a few unimportant exceptions being made, 
 it stretched only so far. 
 
 We know neither the number of missionaries in the field 
 nor the number of native Christians at the close of the sixteenth 
 century. But if the Jesuits alone had about 300 Indian 
 missionaries in 1 590, we may safely compute the number 
 of missionaries of all the other Orders at 200; that 
 gives in round numbers 500 Roman Catholic mission- 
 aries in India, or about the same number as there were of 
 Protestant missionaries in 1870 (the former, however, having 
 been ninety years on the ground, the latter only eighty). As 
 a result of their work up to 1590, we may reckon about 60,000 
 native Christians in Goa and the neighbourhood, 35,000 on 
 the peninsula of Salsette, 110,000 on the Fisher coast from 
 Tuticorin to Cape Comorin (the numbers given for 1610 vary 
 between 130,000 and 90,000), 14,000 between Cochin and 
 Quilon, and 15,000 in Travancore, south of Ouilon, — these 
 are the greater and more compact masses of native Christians. 
 (We take no account here of the Syrian Church of " Thomas " 
 Christians, which joined hands with Rome in 1599.) In the 
 absence of reliable statistics we may estimate the numerous 
 smaller missions from Ormuz and the island of Diu in the 
 north-west, and along the Indian coast as far as Pegu, at 20,000 
 — a figure probably rather under the mark than over it. Thus 
 the sum total of the successes gained by the first century of 
 Portuguese missions was a Christian community of some 
 254,000 souls (as against 224,258 Protestants in 1871, with 
 approximately the same number of workers and after eighty 
 years' labour).^ 
 
 (d ) Robert de Nobili 
 
 A fresh impulse was given to Indian, and especially to Jesuit, 
 missionary work by the appearance of Robert de Nobili in 1605. 
 
 ^ We must make due allowance, however, for the fact that the whole power of the 
 Portuguese Government was at the beck and call of the Roman Catholic missionaries, 
 whereas the Protestant mission gained its footing in face of constant opposition on 
 the part of Anglo-Indian authorities. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 59 
 
 Born in Rome of a distinguished branch of the Italian nobility, 
 a nephew of the famous Cardinal Bellarmine and nearly related 
 to Pope Marcellus II., this brilliantly gifted, highly educated, and 
 zealous man had voluntarily sacrificed all his prospects in the 
 home country in order to adopt the self-denying calling of a 
 simple missionary in far-away India. Even there he never 
 sought high honour ; his heart burned only with the one desire 
 to convert as many Hindus as possible to Christianity. Now, 
 many of the Parava Christians who had been evangelised on 
 the Fisher coast by Francisco Xavier and his successors had 
 migrated to the city of Madura, at that time one of the most 
 famous centres of South Indian culture and learning and the 
 imposing capital of the pomp-loving Nayak kings. A Jesuit, 
 Fernandes by name, a pious and zealous but not particularly 
 cultured person, had been sent thither to minister to them. 
 The Parava Christians were set little store by in Madura, both 
 on account of their despised origin and their lack of learning, 
 and the little band had no influence whatever upon the heathens 
 by whom they were surrounded. All the efforts of Fernandes 
 to influence or to win the attention of a wider circle than the 
 Fisher Christians proved in vain. It was in the year 1606 that 
 Nobili was appointed to work as colleague to the lonely 
 Fernandes. He had only been a few weeks in Madura when 
 he matured great and far-reaching plans for missionary activity, 
 plans which he had already mapped out at an earlier period. 
 
 Hitherto, as we have already seen, missionary work and the 
 authority of the State had gone hand in hand. In the main, 
 Portuguese colonies only had formed the starting-point for, and 
 become the centres of, missionary operations ; these latter had 
 been carried out with the hall-mark of royal decrees and 
 Portuguese banners writ large upon them ; the Christians had 
 entered the " Prangui Caste," i.e. that of the Franks ' or 
 Portuguese. It was self-evident that such missions were only 
 possible in places where their promoters were within reach of 
 the military or political power of Portugal. This, however, was 
 only possible in reality in a very minute portion of India, only 
 along parts of the coast. In this city of Madura, the metro- 
 polis of one of the ancient empires of South India, situated in 
 the very midst of the main current of Indian civilisation, Nobili 
 found himself confronted with the great and crucial missionary 
 problem, " How can Christianity be brought within the reach 
 of the people of India independent of efforts after territorial 
 aggrandisement ? How can it be so presented to them as that 
 they may be in a position to examine it objectively and to 
 accept it for its own sake?" He arrived at the theoretically 
 correct answer, " The missionary must be, as Paul said, an 
 
6o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Indian to the Indians," and he determined to follow up this 
 path in both directions : on the one hand, he would sever all 
 connection with the Portuguese ; on the other, in all the con- 
 cerns of his life he would endeavour to appear purely and 
 simply a native of India. In determining on this second step, 
 two facts were patent to him from the very outset : Christianity 
 could only be brought within the reach of the Hindus by 
 imitating the outward method by which they were accustomed 
 to receive religious truth, i.e. by the person recommending it 
 himself appearing in the guise of a Brahman ; and further, he 
 could only hope to win people of the upper classes, of the higher 
 castes, by leaving the whole caste system unassailed and un- 
 touched. Of course his premise here is that the Indian caste 
 system is simply a semi-political, semi-social institution, to a 
 large extent independent of religion, though certain of its sub- 
 ordinate features may be of a religious nature. This conception 
 of caste was to Nobili a question of principle; and, so far as we 
 know, neither at this time nor in the subsequent " accommoda- 
 tion " conflicts was such a conception opposed. At the present 
 stage of Indian research we can only characterise this con- 
 ception of caste (which lay at the base of Nobili's whole system) 
 as at the very least one-sided, and especially so as far as it 
 relates to the caste of the Brahmans. But we can well push 
 that matter to one side in order to sketch very briefly the 
 development of Nobili's system. 
 
 Nobili withdrew himself from his colleague Fernandes, 
 procured himself a private house in another district of Madura, 
 and fitted it up so as to resemble in its minutest details the 
 house of a Brahman. He donned the light yellow robe of a 
 Sannyasi (penitent) Brahman, engaged Brahmans as his servants, 
 and confined his menu to the vegetarian diet of the Brahmans. 
 He shrouded himself in mystery, as many of them love to do, 
 seldom appeared in public, and only allowed visitors of the 
 highest castes, and Brahmans in particular, to have access to 
 him. He adopted exclusively the Indian custom of carrying 
 on conversation by means of learned disputations, and sought 
 to commend Christianity as the highest philosophy to the 
 Hindus, so long trained in all the finesse of hair-splitting 
 dialectics. Those who associated themselves with him as 
 disciples, he tried by means of a thirty or forty days' course to 
 lead to a fuller knowledge of Christianity — again chiefly by 
 disputation ; he would then baptize them, though he accounted 
 baptism as by no means implying a breaking with caste. The 
 view now everywhere prevalent in India, that baptism in itself 
 constitutes the breaking of caste, inevitably resulting in exclu- 
 sion from heathen caste circles, had not yet come into existence. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 6i 
 
 On the contrary, those who were baptized maintained all the 
 forms and ceremonies of their old caste; they continued to 
 wear the sacred thread, which Nobili himself now did, the only 
 difference being that the Christian " sacred thread " consisted of 
 three golden strands, symbolic of the Holy Trinity, and two 
 silver ones, typifying the human and divine nature of Christ. 
 But the uninitiated could not perceive the difference, and cases 
 were not unknown in which Christians wore threads consecrated 
 by heathen Brahmans. The Christians too, like the heathen, 
 bore the caste mark on their forehead ; they simply did not 
 employ cow-dung ashes as the natives did, but used instead 
 ashes of sandalwood over which a prescribed form of consecra- 
 tion had been spoken : Nobili too had one of these sandal- 
 wood signs painted on his forehead. A special church was 
 erected for his converts, and they were organised into a self- 
 contained community which had no dealings whatever with the 
 older church of the Parava Christians. Nobili allowed caste 
 differences to exist in all their rigour between church members 
 of a higher and a lower caste, even to the extent of counte- 
 nancing the idea that contact between a Parava Christian and 
 a Brahman Christian rendered the latter unclean. He called 
 himself a Rajah from Rome, a Guru or Teacher of Religion, 
 a Sannyasi or Penitent, and from 1611 onwards, a Brahman to 
 boot. He claimed to be the bringer of a fourth and lost Veda, 
 which he termed the spiritual law ; this alone could impart 
 eternal life. Its contents were partly interspersed among those 
 of the three other Vedas ; to a very great extent, however, they 
 had been up to the present wholly lost ; this lost Veda he now 
 restored to the Hindus. To support this fiction he acquired 
 with astounding industry a knowledge not only of Tamil and 
 Telugu, the two languages principally spoken in Madura, but 
 also of Sanskrit. Nobili was the first European to thoroughly 
 master this difficult language, and he even came to use it with 
 a certain degree of elegance. At the same time he made a 
 profound study of the sacred and philosophical literature of 
 India, and with great skill and a most enviable tenacity of 
 memory he was able to pick out and ever hold in readiness for 
 immediate use all such passages as served to strengthen his 
 bold position. The study of Sanskrit and the ancient literature 
 of the country were at that time wholly neglected, and the 
 Brahmans themselves were not innocent of gross forgeries. All 
 this gave such an able and shrewd individual as Nobili his 
 chance — and he seized it. 
 
 Despite, however, all the learning and sagacity of Nobili, we 
 are none the less compelled to admit that his system contained 
 very serious flaws. His fiction that he was a Brahman from the 
 
62 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 West may be criticised much in the same way as the attempt 
 of some Protestant evangeHst who, disguised as a mendicant 
 friar, and flinging about him learned scraps from patristic 
 Hterature, should carry on a Protestant propaganda in the 
 monasteries of Southern Italy, whilst proclaiming himself all 
 the time a firm friend and a representative of the Pope. Ac- 
 cording to Indian ideas, a Brahman is born a Brahman ; his 
 nobility is a hereditary nobility. A " Roman Brahman " is a 
 contradiction in terms, a plain deception, and all the more so 
 because Nobili sought to disguise the fact that he was of 
 European descent. He had only himself to blame when the 
 suspicious heresy-hunters amongst the Brahmans industriously 
 wormed out the knowledge of his relations with the Portuguese 
 ecclesiastic and civil authorities on the West Coast of India, and 
 triumphantly declared that, after all, he was a Prangui, a 
 European, and that there was no reason in the world to conceal 
 his intimate connection with Padre Fernandes and the rest of 
 the Portuguese. The division of the Church at Madura, with its 
 two separate places of worship and the entire separation of the 
 two congregations, was bound to create a painful impression 
 throughout Christendom : it was too great a contrast to the 
 fundamental Christian doctrine of brotherly love. We cannot 
 blame the Parava Christians for receiving their degradation to 
 Christians of the second rank somewhat mutinously, and for 
 actively protesting against it both to the heathen and to the 
 ecclesiastical authorities. 
 
 Mullbauer, a Roman Catholic historian, passes judgment 
 on this separation of the two Churches in the following words : 
 " The thoughtful student will not fail to observe the contra- 
 diction in the retention of caste to the all-reconciling love of 
 Christianity ; for Christian concord cannot but be broken when 
 a Christian Brahman deems himself unclean through his having, 
 in the same church and at the same holy board, knelt side by 
 side with a Pariah, and with him received, under the form of 
 bread, his Saviour — to Whom no respect of persons is known. 
 We are asked to defend such a state of things both on the 
 ground of the example of the Apostles and on that of the 
 practice of the Church, but unjustly. . . . Nobody will ever be 
 able to prove that Jewish and Gentile Christians had separate 
 churches, and it might rightly be condemned as a relapse into 
 Pharisaism had a Jewish Christian considered himself defiled 
 by receiving the Sacrament at the hands of an elder who visited 
 a Gentile Christian, to say nothing of the fact that the elder 
 himself might have previously been a Gentile unbeliever. 
 Although there may have been retained in the Church even 
 down to the present time many a method of favouring the 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 63 
 
 wealthy and the great of the earth, can it be believed for a 
 moment that the Church would ever permit this right to be 
 claimed by any parties whatsoever? And if ever views so 
 much out of keeping with the very nature of Christianity were 
 to become prevalent, those who held them would assuredly be 
 shown the error of their ways and no new encouragement 
 be afforded them " (Mullbauer, GescJiichte der katholischen 
 Missionen in Ostindien, p. 209 et seq). 
 
 Nobili and his system were soon severely attacked from 
 all sides. He mollified the opposition of influential Brahmans 
 by means of bribes. He met the complaints of the Parava 
 Christians by the following public notice, which he had nailed 
 up on the front of his house : " I am no Prangui. I was neither 
 born in their country, nor am I a member of their caste. In 
 this God is my witness, and if I lie, I am willing, not only to be 
 deemed a traitor to God and to be given over to the pains of 
 hell hereafter, but also to suffer every conceivable chastisement 
 in this world. I was born in Rome. My family there holds 
 rank corresponding to that of the most distinguished rajahs 
 over here. From my youth I have made choice of the calling 
 of a Sannyasi ; I have studied philosophy and the holy spiritual 
 law. . . . The holy spiritual law which I proclaim obliges no 
 man to renounce his caste or to do anything incompatible with 
 his caste-honour. This law which I proclaim has been preached 
 in this very land by other men, Sannyasis and saints alike. 
 Whoever maintains that this law is peculiar to the Pranguis or 
 the Pariahs commits a great sin ; for, since God is Lord of all 
 castes, His law must likewise be observed by all " (Mullbauer, 
 ibid. p. 184; Warneck, Protestayitische Bdeuchtung, p. 390). 
 The sophism by which he sets his Roman descent in contra- 
 distinction to the popular conception of the " Prangui " — 
 whether regarded as " Portuguese " or " native Christians " — is 
 fallacious ; and his insistence to such an extent upon actual or 
 only imaginary echoes of the truth in Indo-pagan literature, as if 
 Christianity contributed nothing further, nothing new, nothing 
 radically different, is equally untrue. 
 
 But these lesser disputes and conflicts at Madura were only 
 as a drop in the bucket compared with the fight for the ecclesi- 
 astical recognition of Nobili's system — a system that stood in 
 sharp contrast to that of Xavier which had prevailed hitherto, 
 to the ordinary rule and practice of every monastic order in 
 India, and to the resolutions of the Indian Provincial Councils, 
 There is no point in our tracing here the course of these intricate 
 proceedings, confused and involved as they often were by cross- 
 currents of intrigue, and of personal sympathies and antipathies : 
 they are not on the whole very edifying reading, and they 
 
64 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 display an amazingly small amount of real competence, by the 
 way in which they were conducted. Far and away the cleverest 
 document in the controversy is Nobili's own defence, to which, 
 although it would carry no conviction to a Protestant or any 
 one acquainted with Indian affairs, there was practically no reply 
 possible from the standpoint of late medieval Romanism. The 
 temporary cessation of this thirteen years' war was brought 
 about by the Bull of Pope Gregory on January 31st, 1623, 
 " Romanae sedis antistes," which gave ecclesiastical sanction to 
 Nobili's system. It is characteristic of Roman Catholicism to 
 notice on what points the conflict is made to turn and what 
 concessions were made to Nobili : " Out of compassion for 
 human weakness," ^ Nobili's converts are permitted to retain the 
 plait of hair (the " kudumi," at that time spelt " kodhumbi "), 
 the Brahmanical thread, the sandalwood sign on the forehead, 
 and the customary ablutions of their caste. They must, however, 
 separate these things from all heathen superstition and envelop 
 these old pagan customs with a cloak of Christianity. " The 
 cord and the coil of hair shall not be received in idolatrous 
 temples,' nor, as appears to have been the case hitherto, at the 
 hands of ' yogis ' or ' bottis ' (masters), or from any other 
 unbeliever, but solely from Catholic priests who shall consecrate 
 these things with holy water and distribute them after read- 
 ing the prayers appointed by the bishop of the diocese" 
 (Mullbauer, ibid. p. 195). The great questions which lay at the 
 root of the whole conflict, the position of the Christian com- 
 munity within the caste system, the division of the Church into 
 a Brahman and a Pariah section, the honourableness and 
 admissibility of arrogating to themselves the name and standing 
 of Brahmans, as Nobili and his colleagues had done, etc., — all 
 such questions were passed over in the papal decree, and 
 scarcely debated in the controversy which preceded it. 
 
 This papal decree of 1623 was a victory for Nobili's system. 
 On this basis it was developed for more than a century in the 
 Tamil country, it was pushed to its furthest issues in every 
 direction, and every possible inference and conclusion was 
 drawn from it. Immediately after his victory Nobili himself 
 seized the staff of a wandering Brahman teacher and sect 
 founder, in order to propagate his new doctrine far and wide 
 throughout the Tamil country, even as far north as Salem. 
 Fellow-workers also rallied round him, though in varying 
 numbers. Only in 1648, and after forty-two years of missionary 
 labour, did Nobili, now well-nigh blind, leave the theatre of his 
 exploits, and, obeying the orders of his superiors, retire, first to 
 the Jesuit College at Jaffna, in Ceylon, and then to the Jesuit 
 
 ^ '^ Hu>nanc£ in/irmitaits misercndo." 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 65 
 
 monastery at Milapur, near Madras. To the end of his life he 
 observed the strictest ceremonial of a Sannyasi, and limited his 
 diet to a few bitter herbs cooked in water. His time was 
 divided betwixt extensive literary work and quiet prayer in 
 the so-called Grotto of the Apostle Thomas. We possess a 
 long list of his Tamil writings, most of which were printed 
 sooner or later. An octogenarian and quite blind, he died in 
 peace and submission to the will of God, at Milapur, on 
 February i6th, 1656. Incontestably he is numbered, with Xavier, 
 amongst the great missionaries of India ; for a century and a half 
 all the important missionary work of his Order was executed 
 along the lines he had laid down in so masterly a fashion. 
 Even in the nineteenth century he was remembered by the 
 Hindus as the Tatwa Bodha Swami. Of the fundamental 
 deceitfulness of his method he seems to have had no sense ; he 
 was too deeply imbued with the traditions of later Catholic 
 missions and was too pronounced a Jesuit for that. 
 
 Missions on Nobili's methods were multiplied, and they 
 carried with them their natural consequences. Although 
 Nobili had shrewdly begun with the Brahmans in the pre- 
 sentation of his teaching, he must nevertheless have desired to 
 see it spreading abroad amongst the lower classes to as large 
 an extent as possible, especially as the Jesuits soon discovered 
 among the Pariahs and the lower strata of the people a much 
 greater readiness to receive the new doctrine than was the 
 case among the Brahmans. But when large bodies of native 
 Christians began to be recruited from the ranks of the Pariahs 
 and the caste-less, a new difficulty came to light : those 
 appointed as missionaries to the higher classes could not, if 
 they wished to be any longer considered as Brahmans and to 
 work within the boundaries of the caste system, have any 
 relations whatever with the Pariah Christians, could not enter 
 the churches and chapels built for the Pariahs, could not ad- 
 minister to them the Sacraments, could not visit at their huts, 
 etc, ; in short, they were excluded from exercising all pastoral 
 duties towards the Pariahs. And, vice versa, a missionary to the 
 Pariahs was debarred from all access to the Christian communities 
 of higher castes. It was a direct consequence of the system 
 that two orders of Jesuit missionaries came into being, the Brah- 
 man Sannyasis (Romapuri Sannyasis or Kshatriya Brahmans, 
 i.e. Northern Brahmans) for the upper classes, and Pandara 
 Swamis for the lower, and these two classes were thus forced 
 to have as little as possible to do with one another, and were 
 unable to hold at any rate public intercourse the one with the 
 other. It demanded a large amount of self-denial on the part 
 of the Pandara Swamis, thus debarred from all communication 
 5 
 
66 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 with the educated strata of society, and indeed from the brethren 
 of their own Order, to confine themselves to the uneducated and 
 backboneless Pariahs. It is no wonder that, towards the end of 
 the seventeenth and during the eighteenth century, when the 
 number of Jesuit missionaries was no longer adequate to cope 
 with their extensive missionaiy work, no suitable Pandara 
 Swamis were to be found. The Brahman Sannyasis were 
 obliged to shepherd the Pariah Christian communities in ways 
 altogether pitiful. They administered the Sacrament in the 
 dead of night outside the doors of the churches, whither the 
 dying were also brought for extreme unction ; they built them- 
 selves houses with secret side entrances for the Pariah Christians ; 
 they divided the churches by lofty walls, that the Pariahs might 
 at least behold the mass from a transept or a kind of " Nico- 
 demus' corner." On the whole, however, they neglected the 
 already ignorant Pariahs in a most reprehensible fashion. The 
 main blame of course for this is due to the insufficient number 
 of missionaries employed in the Madura Mission ; even in its 
 best days there were seldom more than twelve or fifteen 
 European padres engaged at the same time in this extensive 
 field, and after the end of the seventeenth century there were 
 generally only eight. And no change was made when, after 
 the occupation of Pondicherry by the French in 1680, French 
 Jesuits began to come to India.^ Up to that time the mission- 
 aries had been principally Portuguese and Italians. The French 
 soon sought out a field of their own in the Carnatic (North and 
 South Arcot), though they worked it on Nobili's methods. 
 
 The Brahman Sannyasis had likewise peculiar difficulties. 
 Only a Nobili was competent to penetrate the secrets of 
 Brahman philosophy and sophistry and to fight the Brahmans 
 with their own weapons, PI is successors frequently met with 
 the greatest obstacles in acquiring the difficult Indian languages, 
 and only with difficulty succeeded in steering a straight course 
 through the maze of Indian philosophy. Besides this it became 
 of course more and more awkward for Nobili's successors to 
 maintain the fiction that they had nothing to do with Europe ; 
 their intimate relations therewith were only too patent, and the 
 reproach that they were Pranguis was raised against them at 
 every fresh persecution. Moreover, this fiction with its accom- 
 paniment of an exclusively vegetarian diet, and conditions of 
 life and mode of travel wholly intolerable for Europeans, in- 
 volved an abnegation and a self-denial which cost them dear. 
 The mortality in their ranks, already so thin, was disproportion- 
 ately large; a catechist speaks of the death of twenty-four 
 padres in the space of forty years, whom he himself knew 
 
 1 The first of them arrived there in 1699. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 6j 
 
 intimately, to say nothing of those who were compelled to 
 return from the field with ruined health. 
 
 And the results Nobili actually aimed at with his system 
 were never obtained either by himself or by his successors. 
 Within the first decades many Brahmans are said to have 
 embraced Christianity, especially at Madura. But it was a 
 just judgment of heaven that this, Nobili's principal station, 
 was and continued to be, as a matter of fact, the most unfruitful 
 of all. At Nobili's death it numbered only 200 Christians — 
 and his admirers claim that he converted 100,000 Hindus ! 
 And exactly in proportion as the European descent of Nobili 
 and his colleagues became evident, conversions from Brahman 
 castes practically ceased. In the Jesuit Mission at Madura 
 itself by far the larger number of the Christians belonged to the 
 Sudra and Pariah castes ; but the assumption by many of these 
 of the Christian name was purchased at the heavy expense of 
 maintaining the caste system of India in all its rigour. Even 
 in the eighteenth century the idea was abroad in Christian 
 circles that they formed a new religious caste, with a some- 
 what anomalous doctrine, it was true, but still one that would 
 in all the details of life fall within the limits of Indian tradition. 
 
 The fundamental dishonesty of the Jesuitical system is per- 
 haps revealed in the most striking way of all by the remarkable 
 literary forgeries which the Jesuits committed, probably about 
 the middle of the seventeenth century. In order to support 
 Nobili's claim to have restored a hitherto lost Veda, they pub- 
 lished — which of the missionaries it was we know not ; Catholic 
 writers try to exonerate Nobili of any blame in the matter, 
 although the native Christians of Pondicherry always attributed 
 the authorship to him (Miillbauer, p. 179, note i) — the so-called 
 " Ezour Vedam," ^ " the spiritual teaching," an exposition of 
 so-called natural theology, from which specifically Christian 
 dogmas were eliminated, and the whole of which was arranged 
 in a form pleasing to Tamil taste. The Jesuit missionaries are 
 said to have sworn before an assembly of Brahmans that they had 
 received this book from the god Brahma ! In India as in 
 Europe this subtle forgery was for a century and a half regarded 
 as genuine, though the reason was that neither in the East nor 
 in the West had any one skilled knowledge of the real Vedas, or a 
 sufficiently developed historical appreciation of them. Protestant 
 missionaries in Madras exposed the fraud about the year 1840. 
 
 In order, however, to be just to the Madura Mission, we must 
 remember one thing: it was carried on under exceptional 
 difficulties. Its entire sphere of operations was, during the 
 
 ^ Printed in French at Yverdon in 2 vols, in 1778. Cf. Asiatic Researches^ 
 vol. xiv. pp. 1-159. 
 
68 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 greater part of a century (1690- 17 50), swept from end to end 
 with unceasing wars, which inflicted on the Christians bitter 
 persecutions, pillage, and distresses. And as the missionaries 
 had renounced all European protection, and even all connection 
 with colonial powers hailing from Europe, they were thus ex- 
 posed to every caprice of heathen and Muhammadan rajahs, and 
 to all the hostility of the Brahmans and the fanatical sects of South 
 India, especially the Vaishnavites or Dasseris. Times without 
 number they were cast into prison, cruelly scourged, banished 
 from the country, and so on. One of them, a pious monk named 
 Juan de Brito, was even put to death in 1693 at Ureiur (hod. 
 Pudukkottai), in the State of Marava. Why they should, by a 
 most studied attention to Indian customs and ideas, avoid as far 
 as possible everything singular and should wish to appear truly 
 Indian in every respect can only really be understood when one re- 
 members the hopeless political state of the country and their own 
 perilous situation as well as that of their adherents. It was only 
 by laying claim to the calling of a Sannyasi that they obtained 
 any measure of protection whether from potentate or from people 
 — for no Hindu would ever dare to lay hands on a Sannyasi. 
 
 In view of these exceptional difficulties it is worthy of note 
 that besides Nobili and Juan de Brito, the martyr, quite a 
 number of distinguished men worked in the Madura Mission ; 
 such were the devoted pastor and seeker of souls, Martinez 
 (d. 1656), the eminent linguist Joseph Beschi (d, 1747) whom the 
 Tamils have come to regard as one of their classical writers, that 
 self-denying Frenchman, Jean V. Bouchet, etc. What number 
 of native Christians belonged to this mission cannot be accurately 
 stated, both on account of the entire lack of reliable statistics 
 and of the frequent alterations in the stations. 
 
 The main centres of its work were Madura, Trichinopoly 
 (later Aur or Wariur, in its immediate neighbourhood), Tanjore 
 (later the adjacent town of Elakurichi), the kingdom of Marava 
 (the modern Pudukkottai and Ramnad), Satyamangalam in 
 Mysore, and a few stations north of the Cauvery. Then at the 
 commencement of the eighteenth century there were added the 
 new (1680) French sphere at Pondicherry and a few stations in 
 the Carnatic (the Arcot provinces). At Nobili's death in 1656 
 100,000 Christians are said to have belonged to the Mission. 
 About the year 1703 the number of Christians in the whole 
 district was reckoned in round numbers at 150,000 souls, 46,482 
 of whom we can check by the baptismal records for the years 
 1656-1687 (Miillbauer, ibid. p. 237 and p. 212, note). In 
 Mysore there may have been some 35,000 in all, and at the 
 French stations in the Carnatic between 8000-9000. In the 
 small kingdom of Marava, which, however, enjoyed the reputa- 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 6g 
 
 tion of being peculiarly " good ground," we are told that in 
 1687 there were only 2070 Christians; in 1691-1692, 8000; in 
 1693-1694, 14,000, and a short time afterwards other 13,600, mak- 
 ing a total of 37,670 persons baptized in eight years ! Laynez, 
 General Director of the Madras Mission from 1685 to 1704, is 
 said to have baptized 45,000 people himself. But these figures 
 are all unreliable. At any rate Dubois, one of the Jesuits them- 
 selves, states that in his time (18 15) there were but 33,000 
 Christians at the outside connected with the Madura Mission. 
 It is still more deplorable to read that even this number were 
 in an unhealthy condition. Thus Mlillbauer, an upright and 
 reliable witness, writes : " For a hundred and fifty years the 
 missionaries worked unweariedly among the Indian Christians ; 
 but there resulted therefrom neither any considerable movement 
 towards Christianity amongst the upper castes, nor yet the least 
 amalgamation of the various castes amongst those professing 
 Christianity" (idid. p. 210). 
 
 It was quite impossible that the decree of 1623 could be the 
 last word of the Holy See on the accommodation policy of 
 the Jesuits, About 1700 the controversy broke forth afresh, 
 and raged with incredible vehemence and bitterness during the 
 next forty-four years. On renewed plaints being received from 
 the Capucine monks in 1703, Pope Clement xi. dispatched 
 Maillard de Tournon, Patriarch of Antioch, to India, with full 
 power to pronounce a definite verdict on the practices of the 
 Jesuits. On June 23rd, 1704, he published a decree in which 
 sixteen malpractices of the Jesuits were condemned. At a 
 baptism neither the anointing of the convert with spittle, nor 
 the use of salt, nor breathing upon the face of the convert 
 must be omitted!! It is not permissible to give names or 
 appellations to converts or to church furniture similar in sound 
 to those given to an idol or a heathen Sannyasi (2 and 3). 
 The baptism of converts' children shall not be delayed beyond 
 a certain time mutually agreed upon (4). Marriage before the 
 age of seven years (!) is forbidden (5). The tali or sign of 
 marriage, and the knot of a hundred and eight threads by which 
 it is worn, are forbidden (6 and 7). Women may attend the 
 churches during the morbus menstrualis (10). " When a maiden 
 is afflicted with the above-mentioned indisposition for the first 
 time, the fact shall not be made public, for decency's sake, and 
 no festival ought on that account to be celebrated by relatives 
 and neighbours" (i i). It is forbidden to Pariah Christians to 
 serve as musicians in heathen temples ; it is also forbidden to 
 daub marks on the forehead with ashes of cow-dung and 
 to practise the customary washings and ceremonial ablutions 
 of the Brahmans, etc. (13, 14, 15). The most incisive pro- 
 
70 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 nouncement was the 12th: "In future, refusal of the Holy 
 Sacrament to Pariahs who may be sick will no longer be per- 
 mitted ; such persons shall be visited by the missionaries in 
 their homes, and the sacred unction given without distinction 
 of sex or caste." With the exception of this last, the clauses 
 in Tournon's decree seem to us somewhat paltry ; they strike 
 at the coarser abuses which had crept in under the accommoda- 
 tion system in course of time, without entering into the great 
 questions of principle which lay at the root of it. The question 
 Tournon set before himself in each separate case was : Which 
 usages may in a case of necessity be allowed to remain, and 
 which must be abolished for the sake of uniformity of observ- 
 ance in the Romish Church ? 
 
 It is on this decree of Tournon that all further hostilities, 
 extending as they did over more than the next forty years, 
 hinge. The Jesuits made every effort to hinder its being carried 
 out, or to obtain its. withdrawal. They appealed to unconfirmed 
 expressions of opinion both by Tournon and by Pope 
 Clement XI. ; they opposed the Pope's briefs by passive resist- 
 ance, and by emphasising the Portuguese right of patronage 
 they stirred up the Bishops and Archbishops of Goa and 
 Milapur against the intervention of the Pope. But it was all 
 to no purpose, each successive Pope confirmed and renewed 
 Tournon's judgment: Clement XI. in two briefs of January 7th, 
 1707 and 1711 ; Benedict Xlll. by the brief, "Ad aures nostras 
 pervenit " of December 12th, 1727; Clement XII. by that 
 entitled " Compertum exploratumque" of August 24th, 1734 
 (there were a few unimportant concessions to the Jesuits in this 
 one), and later by the two commencing " concredita nobis" 
 (May 13th, 1739) and " continere labia nostra non possumus." 
 The conflict was finally terminated by Pope Benedict 
 XIV. in the famous Bull "Omnium sollicitudinum " dated 
 September 12th, 1744, in which he confirmed and emphasised 
 Tournon's decree and the briefs of his predecessors. " Should 
 the members of the Society of Jesus not obey within the 
 appointed time, they shall be deprived of all authority, and 
 missionaries of another Order be sent out to India" (Mull- 
 bauer, ibid. pp. 262-276). There cannot be the least doubt that, 
 so far as Tournon in his decree struck at the abuses of the 
 Jesuits, he has received, notwithstanding the almost desperate 
 opposition of that Order, the unconditional sanction and 
 approval of the Papal See ; that is to say, the Jesuits experienced 
 a complete defeat in this controversy. It is therefore incom- 
 prehensible that as late as 1875 a writer in Katliolisc/ieti 
 Missionen should make the assertion : " In the end Nobili's 
 principles proved themselves both tenable and practicable, and 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 71 
 
 his method of procedure not simply not captious but the only 
 serviceable one under the circumstances" (p. 52). And it is 
 a most barefaced contradiction of the truth when the Jesuit, 
 Father Atteridge (in the Dublin Review, 1884, p. 121), contends 
 that the Bull " Omnium sollicitudinum " was " in no sense a con- 
 demnation of Nobili's methods. The principle adopted by 
 Nobili was not condemned but sanctioned by the Papal See" !! 
 (Cf. Warneck, Abriss, p. 366.) 
 
 (e) Other Roman Catholic Missions during the Sixteenth, 
 Seventeenth, and Eighteenth CentwHes 
 
 As we have already mentioned, the Franciscans carried on 
 extensive missionary work in India even before the Jesuits, 
 and more especially two branches of this widely diffused Order, 
 the Observantes and the Reformat!. Most unfortunately, 
 their power was held in check for more than half a century, 
 dating- from 1580, by a most passionate quarrel con- 
 cerning the establishment of an independent province of 
 the Order of the Observantes in India. At the end of the 
 seventeenth century there were 200 Observantes and 258 
 Reformat! in the various Franciscan establishments in India 
 and Ceylon. From 1548 onwards the Dominicans were also 
 to be found in India in ever increasing numbers. Besides 
 these two Orders we find Jesuits nearly everywhere (in addition 
 to those engaged in the Madura Mission). All three Orders 
 had their headquarters in the Portuguese colonies on the west 
 and south coasts of India ; they laboured principally within the 
 Portuguese domain or spheres of influence. Such headquarters 
 were the coast fortresses of Diu, Bassein, Shaul, Goa with its 
 adjacent islands, the peninsulas of Salsette and Bardez, and the 
 island of Karanja, Cochin, and Negapatam. It is perfectly 
 astounding how strongly these places were manned. In Goa, 
 for instance, there were first and foremost the magnificent 
 headquarters of the Jesuits, their College with 130 fully 
 ordained priests (in 1634), the adjacent House for those who 
 had recently taken their vows with 30 inmates, as well as 
 a House for Novitiates and a Seminary ; then there was the 
 Monastery of the Franciscan Observantists with 60 monks 
 (about the year 1700) and a College, both institutions with 
 chairs of theology and philosophy ; the great Madre de Dios 
 Monastery of the Franciscan Reformat! ; the St. Domingo 
 Monastery of the Dominicans with 70 monks (in 1560); and 
 just outside the gates of Goa the Novitiate Monastery of 
 St. Thomas inhabited by 30 Dominicans, and acting as a 
 kind of University, with five chairs of theology and philosophy ; 
 
72 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the Monastery of the Augustinians with 50 monks (in 1600), 
 near to which stood a nunnery, at that time the only one in 
 India; the Monastery of the Carmehtes (built in 181 8), and the 
 principal House of the Theatines. Thus in the halcyon days of 
 Goa there must have been between 300 and 400 monks 
 constantly in residence there. Some of them at any rate were 
 occupied in shepherding the forcibly converted inhabitants of 
 the town and island of Goa, the peninsulas of Salsette and 
 Bardez, and the island of Karanja. It is barely conceivable that 
 in spite of all this bitter complaints had to be made about the 
 spiritual neglect of the people of Goa. " Although there were 
 many monasteries and priests in Goa, yet the ignorance of the 
 majority of the lower classes was such that they could not be 
 admitted to the table of the Lord even in the hour of death, 
 because the priests had not taken the trouble to instruct them, 
 or perhaps because they were unequal to the exertion of hearing 
 confessions " (Miillbauer, p. 352). Other Portuguese settlements 
 were similarly rich in monasteries, churches, colleges, and various 
 religious institutions ; these coast towns literally swarmed with 
 them. We should conclude that in such places the combina- 
 tion of the temporal power of the Portuguese and the large 
 numbers of priests and monks would promote rapid progress 
 in Christianising the populace ; but we have no numerical 
 results to go upon. 
 
 In direct contrast to these very strongly garrisoned coast 
 towns are the few inland missions, which could not, however, 
 depend to the same extent on Portuguese functionaries for protec- 
 tion. The Goa district was surrounded on the north, south, and 
 east by the kingdom of Bijapur, and several thousands of the 
 Goa Christians belonged to this kingdom, especially in the 
 provinces immediately adjacent to Goa. At first the Jesuits 
 attempted to obtain a foothold in this kingdom, the Muham- 
 madan rulers of which were mostly inimical to Portugal ; as 
 they met with insuperable difficulties, however, owing to their 
 European birth, they entrusted this work to a company of 
 priests composed of converted Brahmans, the so-called Ora- 
 torians. The enterprise does not seem to have met with much 
 success. Nor do the Jesuits appear to have been more fortunate 
 in their labours begun in 1643 at Seitta Panaiche, a small king- 
 dom in that Kanarese-speaking region which we to-day term the 
 South Maratha country, for their work here was soon abandoned. 
 The Theatine monks from 1641 to 1693 attempted to gain a 
 footing in the then powerful kingdom of Golconda (hod. Hydera- 
 bad), but their work too met with manifold interruptions, and they 
 were not numerous enough to carry it on to advantage. They 
 founded, however, small scattered communities of native Chris- 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 73 
 
 tians at Masulipatam, Chicacole, Bimlipatam, and other places 
 situated on a strip of the coast of the Central and Northern Tclugu 
 country, which was at that time partly under Portuguese influence. 
 The duty of caring for these little companies subsequently 
 passed into the hands of the Augustinians. This latter Order, 
 taking as its base the Portuguese factory Hooghly, not far from 
 the modern Calcutta, had undertaken an extensive series of 
 operations in Lower Bengal. During the short golden age of 
 this mission, in the first thirty years of the seventeenth century, 
 its adherents stretched from Pipli in Orissa to Chittagong in 
 Further India, and included 22,000 Christians in eleven large 
 parishes. But even Roman Catholic authorities judge un- 
 favourably of its promoters. " The churches are nearly in 
 ruins, the monks are covetous and dissolute, they maintain a 
 vast number of servants, are ignorant of all higher education 
 and of the language of the people — although they spend three 
 years in Hooghly in order to learn it " (Mullbauer, p. 343). 
 Two other missionary enterprises of this period are of great 
 interest. From the year 1707 Italian Capucines had been 
 pressing through Nepal and Tibet, and at length they arrived 
 at Lhasa and founded stations there, and at Takpo, as well as 
 in the three chief towns of Nepal, Patan, Bhatgaon and 
 Katmandu ; their main bases for this very advanced work 
 were Chandernagore on the Lower Hooghly, already in the hands 
 of the French, and Patna on the lower Ganges. The other 
 enterprise, and one that enjoyed much fame at the time, was the 
 Jesuit mission to the court of the Great Moghul. The Emperor 
 Akbar (1555-1605), the most kindly ruler in Muhammadan 
 India, summoned the Jesuit fathers to his court in 1580, in 
 order that he too might acquire a thorough knowledge of 
 Christianity. He had created a kind of eclectic religion, taking 
 elements from Islam, Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism, and all 
 manner of Indian sects. This he called the " Ilahi" religion ; it 
 was a religion in which pure Deism was to find its expression in 
 sun-worship and veneration of the Emperor. This mixed religion 
 had already been completed and promulgated before the Jesuits 
 reached Akbar's court. The latter was therefore not at all 
 likely to desire to become a Christian and to be baptized. 
 Nevertheless, the Director of the Jesuit Order issued instruc- 
 tions that priests were to remain at the court of the Great 
 Moghul as long as possible, that they might be ready to seize 
 any favourable opportunity of gaining influence. The mission 
 was thus purely one connected with the court, and it limited 
 itself almost exclusively to the pastoral oversight of the few 
 Portuguese or other Christians who had been driven by evil 
 chance to the court or the dominions of the Great Moghul. A 
 
74 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 number of truly zealous and devoted Jesuits occupied this 
 difficult post, such as Rudolfo Aquaviva (i 580-1 583) and 
 Hieronimo Xavier, a nephew of Francisco Xavier (1595-1610?). 
 So long as the magnanimous Akbar held the reins of power, 
 things went on tolerably well ; but under his vacillating successor, 
 Jehangir, and the latter's fanatical Muhammadan successors. 
 Shah Jehan and Aurungzebe, the work came to a complete 
 standstill. The largest number of Christians seems never to 
 have exceeded 100. " About the middle of the eighteenth 
 century there existed five Christian churches in the Moghul 
 Empire, two at Delhi, one at Agra, one at Marwar, and one at 
 Jaipur, the last named without a missionary and almost with- 
 out Christians" (Miillbauer, p. 287). 
 
 From the second half of the seventeenth century two cir- 
 cumstances operated unfavourably on the development of 
 Roman Catholic missions. The first of these was the decline 
 of the Portuguese power. About 1650 the Dutch obtained 
 entire mastery over Ceylon. In 1658 they conquered the 
 Jaffiia district; during that same year they occupied 
 Negapatam, Manar, and Tuticorin, whilst in 1662 Kranganur, 
 in 1663 Cochin, and in 1681 Quilon fell into their hands. 
 Everywhere they regarded the priests and monks, hand and 
 glove with the Portuguese as these latter were, as their natural 
 enemies ; they drove them into exile, pulled down their 
 monasteries, and seized their churches for their own use. In 
 1668 Bombay and the island of Salsette passed by inheritance 
 to Charles II. of England, and in consequence of this the 
 Franciscans in that region were compelled to beat a retreat. 
 As far back as 1632 the Great Moghul, Shah Jehan, and his 
 governor, Kasim Khan, had temporarily captured and pulled 
 down the Portuguese port of Hooghly in remote Bengal, and 
 had thereby inflicted a grievous blow on the Augustinian 
 mission in that place. In 1739 the Marathas stormed all 
 Portuguese ports north of Goa, and put an end to Portuguese 
 dominion in those parts. Although Portuguese monks had been 
 the pioneers of missionary work and service during the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries, their interest in missionary and 
 ecclesiastical progress began to die down the moment the 
 temporal power of the Portuguese began to decay. Monasteries 
 which in better days had been manned by twenty-five or more 
 monks, could now count on a bare half-dozen, whilst others 
 stood entirely empty. The staff of workers barely sufficed to 
 conserve the ground already won ; further conquests were no 
 longer thought of. 
 
 Furthermore, other territorial interests, particularly those of 
 France and England, had grown powerful, and these nations 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 75 
 
 insisted upon the sending out of non-Portuguese as pastors of 
 the native churches and as missionaries. Moreover, there had 
 arisen beyond the borders of Portugal, especially in Italy and 
 France, a lively interest in missions to India, and missionaries 
 who were sent out from those countries were by no means 
 disposed to swear allegiance to the King of Portugal or to allow 
 themselves to be sent out by Portuguese organisations. It is 
 true the Pope had in 1454 granted the King of Portugal an 
 unlimited right of patronage over the entire Indian mission 
 field ; but in view of the altered position of affairs both the 
 Pope and the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, a Society 
 established in 1632, saw the urgent necessity of promoting 
 mission work in India independent of Portugal. Portugal, on 
 the other hand, regarded every attempt in that direction as an 
 infringement of her rights, and sought to frustrate it by all kinds 
 of intrigue and opposition. From 1630, therefore, we see new 
 monkish organisations taking the field in opposition to Portugal, 
 and the pages of Roman Catholic missionary history are 
 henceforth filled with recitals of unedifying quarrels between 
 Portugal and Rome, which later came to a head in the painful 
 schism of Goa. The Italian Theatines had already suffered 
 greatly by reason of this discord ; after the failure of their other 
 missionary ventures, they undertook in 1693 the pastoral care 
 of the Romish Christians in the English station of Cuddalore. 
 The Capucines, who were for the most part of French origin, 
 and who had laboured since the year 1630 in Pondicherry and 
 Madras, became in the " Accommodation Controversy " from 
 1703 onwards the most determined opponents of the methods 
 of the Jesuits. Later they sought out a field far away from 
 " these noises " in Nepal and Tibet. The Carmelites, resident 
 in India from 1616, assumed pastoral oversight of the English 
 possessions of Surat, Bombay, and above all of the Syrians 
 united with Rome living in Travancore and Cochin, where we 
 shall encounter them later. 
 
 (f) TJie Stniggles of the Syrian ChujxJi in Malabar and the 
 Victoiy of the Romish Church. 1498-1599^ 
 
 Whilst Vasco da Gama and his followers did not find in 
 South India (as many, basing their hopes on uncertain rumours 
 and hearsay, had hoped) a great Christian empire, such as that 
 of the fabulous Prester John, for instance, they did, however, 
 
 ^ Bibliography : Dr. W. Germann, Die Kirche der Thomas-Christian, ein Beitrag 
 zur Geschichte der orientalischen Kircheii, pp. 313-770; Collins, Missionary Enter- 
 prise in the East with especial reference to the Syrian Christians of Malabar ; 
 Buchanan, Christian Researches. 
 
'je HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 discover there a very ancient, comparatively strong, and highly 
 respected Christian Church. Now for the first time detailed 
 and trustworthy reports about it began gradually to percolate 
 into Europe ; at length we see this ancient Church, though it 
 must be understood that our view of it is obtained by looking 
 through the spectacles of Roman Catholic priests and bishops. 
 Those Indian Christians, who call themselves Thomas Chris- 
 tians — after their greatly revered and venerated Apostle Thomas 
 — live almost exclusively on that part of the Malabar coast 
 between Calicut in the north and Quilon in the south ; the 
 little groups found farther to the north or south of the district 
 lying between those two towns are offshoots of the parent 
 body. Within that region they are found most numerously on 
 the strip of land between Kranganur and Aleppey, reaching from 
 the seacoast to the western spurs of the Ghats. At the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century it was estimated that they 
 comprised 30,000 families, or about 150,000 souls. The far- 
 famed and numerous community found in earlier times in the 
 neighbourhood of the shrines of St, Thomas at Milapur would 
 appear to have been wholly dispersed. The Portuguese found 
 the Malabar coast rent and torn asunder into countless little, 
 and less than little, kingdoms and principalities, such as the 
 kingdom of the Samuri of Calicut, those of Cochin, Pimenta, 
 Parua, Porca, Mangate, Muterte, Wadakenkur, Tekkenkur, 
 Travancore, and others, most of them no larger than the smallest 
 of the " plum " States of Germany, and generally at war one 
 with another. The tradition was still extant among the 
 Christians that they had at no very distant date formed an 
 independent kingdom, and they still preserved the sceptre of 
 their last " king." In the meantime they had lost their political 
 independence, and were scattered up and down the various 
 small principalities, often oppressed and downtrodden, but yet 
 on the whole a highly respected and wealthy class. Although 
 politically rent asunder, they clung firmly to their ecclesiastical 
 unity. From the most ancient times they had regarded the 
 Nestorian Patriarch of the East, who then resided at Mosul or 
 Gazerta, as their supreme spiritual head ; but for centuries no 
 Nestorian bishops appear to have been sent from Mesopotamia 
 to Malabar. It so happened that in the year 1490 — that is, a 
 few years before the arrival of the Portuguese — the Catholikos 
 Mar Simeon had consecrated two men both bearing the name of 
 Joseph Rabban, as Bishops for India and China. He gave them 
 the appellations Bishop Thomas and Bishop John, and dis- 
 patched them to Malabar, His successor Elias (who took office 
 in 1502) had ordained (1503) two further bishops. Mar Denha 
 and Mar Jacob, and a third, Iballaha, as Metropolitan, These 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 
 
 T7 
 
 five Syrians were received in Malabar with great rejoicing; and 
 the old ecclesiastical ties were thereby renewed, even though 
 at so late an hour. Unfortunately the Nestorian Church 
 in Mesopotamia was weakened by inward strife during the 
 sixteenth century. The Patriarch who died in 1551 left behind 
 only a relative named Simeon, who was, however, unpopular. 
 It had been the rule for more than a century in the Nestorian 
 Church for the Patriarch to be chosen from the immediate 
 connections of his predecessor. The Eastern Nestorians there- 
 fore recognised Simeon, and his successors, all bearing the name 
 Simeon, have ever since been acknowledged as the heads of the 
 Syrian Nestorians in Kurdistan and Urmia. But the Western 
 Nestorians chose John Sulaka as a rival Patriarch (1552), and 
 he, in order to assure his position, threw himself into the arms of 
 the Romish Church (1553). Both branches of the Nestorians, 
 the older under Patriarch Simeon, and the one newly united 
 with Rome, now exercised the right of ordaining bishops for 
 Malabar, and the intrigues of the Romish Propaganda made 
 harvest of the rivalry of the two bishops and worked with might 
 and main to win the whole of the Church of Malabar over to 
 Rome. Only two bishops of Malabar are of note in the six- 
 teenth century. Mar Jacob (probably 1503-1549) and Mar 
 Abraham (15 57-1596 or 1597). 
 
 The Thomas Christians retained Syrian as the language of 
 the Church with great tenacity, although Malayalam was the 
 general language of the countryside. Only Syrian books were 
 used, amongst them being several very ancient and valuable 
 MSS. of the Peschito. It is noteworthy that these MSS. lacked 
 the Books of Esther, Tobias, the Wisdom of Solomon, 2 Peter, 
 2 and 3 John, and the Revelation, as well as John viii. i-i i {re the 
 adulteress) and 1 John v. 7 (the three witnesses), and in other 
 places they showed striking divergence from the text commonly 
 received amongst ourselves. The churches were for the most 
 part very old, not unlike those of Europe, frequently having high 
 vaulted roofs, and being decorated with large and often very 
 old crosses. On the other hand, there were no pictures of saints ; 
 the only saints they honoured were the fathers of the Nestorian 
 Church. They observed three sacraments — baptism, Holy 
 Communion, and ordination to the priesthood. The Lord's 
 Supper they administered in both kinds; but before handing 
 the bread to the communicant the priest dipped it in the wine. 
 Instead of grape wine, which could not be obtained, they made 
 use of juice pressed from raisins, previously steeped in water, 
 or even the ordinary palm wine of the country. They had no 
 confirmation, no auricular confession, no extreme unction. 
 Further, and this is particularly noteworthy, they had no 
 
78 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 monachism — no monks, no nuns, no monasteries. Withal they 
 maintained a well ordered church discipline, which was exercised 
 by the priests in the presence of the whole congregation, and 
 their ban fell heavily on all evil-doers in civil as well as in church 
 life. A beautiful and greatly beloved custom was that of the 
 " love-feast " (Nercha), at the celebration of which many thousands 
 of Christians frequently assembled. It was a good sign, too, that 
 girls who were poor (and as, according to the Syrian custom, 
 girls had no right of inheritance, there were many such) were 
 endowed either by members of the congregation or from the 
 church funds. The Syrian Christians ate only fish and herbs 
 on Wednesdays and Fridays ; on the other hand, they did not 
 regard Saturday as a fast day. Mass was said every Sunday, 
 though it was not a strict rule of the Church that the congrega- 
 tions should assemble in the churches to hear it. It is worthy 
 of special note that there existed a very numerous body of native 
 priests (Kattanars) and deacons (Shammas), who were required 
 to attain a certain degree of education, and, in particular, a 
 knowledge of the Syrian language, though it must be admitted 
 this education was not of a very high order. In many families 
 the spiritual calling had been hereditary from time immemorial, 
 especially in the Palamattam family at Korolongata. In 
 addition to this, the priests were proud of and insisted on the 
 national character of their Church. From the Palamattam 
 family was always chosen the archdeacon, the most influential 
 of all the priests save the bishop sent from Mesopotamia. Most 
 of the priests were married ; many even married a second time ; 
 and their wives were held in the greatest esteem. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that there was a considerable 
 amount of compromise with the usages and ideas of the 
 surrounding heathen ; marriages were often celebrated when 
 one or both parties were only nine or ten years of age; cases 
 of polygamy were not unknown ; Sunday labour was not 
 infrequent ; children were seldom baptized before their fortieth 
 day, and often it was a case of months and years ; in the 
 remoter districts there were whole families who had never been 
 baptized. Pride in the high caste accorded to the Syrians in 
 virtue of their Christianity was so great that they avoided all 
 intercourse with the lowest castes, and discountenanced and 
 sought to prevent the conversion of members of low castes to 
 Christianity. Within the memory of man they had never 
 carried on any kind of missionary activity. The Syrian Church 
 was thus as it were a foreign body, wholly self-contained, in 
 the midst of the heathen populace of Malabar, and for that 
 very reason the more tenacious of its customs and traditions. 
 
 At first the Thomas Christians, accustomed as they had 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 79 
 
 been for long centuries to the oppression of Hindu princes, 
 welcomed the Portuguese as their saviours from peril and as 
 their natural allies. In the spring of 1502, when Vasco da 
 Gama sailed for the second time to the East Indies, he cast 
 anchor in the harbour at Cochin, and a deputation of the 
 Thomas Christians waited upon him to place themselves under 
 the protection of the King of Portugal and to beg of these 
 new comrades in the faith aid against their oppressors. The 
 Portuguese desired nothing better than to make the strong 
 communities of native Christians a strategic base for their 
 nascent colonial empire. So for a time ecclesiastical differences 
 were overlooked, and friendly relations were established ; in 
 all the treaties with the native princes special regard was 
 paid to the Christians. At Kranganur, Cochin, and Quilon 
 Portuguese factories and forts were established. And Bishop 
 Mar Jacobus, who for forty-five long years had held a position 
 of great influence among the Thomas Christians, was so well 
 disposed towards the Portuguese, and cherished for them down 
 to the day of his death in 1549 such boundless confidence that 
 on his death-bed (as we saw on p. 33) he handed over to the 
 Portuguese Governor of Cochin, Pedro de Sequeira, the precious 
 Privilege Tablets which were of simply incalculable value to his 
 Church. Of course even at this early date attempts at Roman 
 Catholic propaganda were not unknown. In the year 1500 
 Simao da Guimaraes, a P'ranciscan who had come over with 
 Cabral's fleet, had applied himself to the Thomas Christians 
 with extraordinary zeal. Half a century later we find a 
 Dominican, Rodrigo de Sousa, endeavouring to compel the 
 Church under his care at Quilon to celebrate mass in Latin. 
 In 1593 a zealous Franciscan, Vincenz, arrived in Malabar and 
 founded a seminary at Kranganur, to train up a new generation 
 of Syrian priests in the spirit and atmosphere of Rome; his 
 plan only came to naught because neither he himself nor his 
 brethren in the Order could understand or teach the language 
 of the Syrian Church, and therefore the youths whom they 
 trained were rejected by the Thomas Christians. About 1550 
 the Portuguese made a decided change in their policy both civil 
 and ecclesiastical with regard to the Thomas Christians. The 
 bold plan was conceived of making them pliant tools in the 
 hands of the Portuguese by thoroughly reforming their Church 
 according to Roman Catholic ideas. To accomplish this it was 
 necessary either to get possession of the person of the bishops of 
 the Church or to set them wholly aside. After the death of the 
 feeble Mar Jacobus there ensued a wild game of intrigue, 
 strategy, deception, violence, and mendacity, which extended 
 over the entire latter half of the sixteenth century, and which 
 
80 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 composes one of the darkest chapters in the history of the 
 Romish Church, The Jesuits were everywhere the moving 
 spirits and the most unscrupulous of agents. Very many of 
 the details we possess concerning this period are involved and 
 unreliable, because, strangely enough, many Romish historians 
 (at their head Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, vol. ii.) have 
 painted the condition of things as even darker than it now 
 appears in reality to have been. In the year 1555 Mar Joseph 
 was consecrated Bishop of the Thomas Christians by the 
 Patriarch Ebed Jesu, Sulaka's successor; but in 1556 he was 
 seized in Cochin, taken by force to Goa, and then put on a ship 
 bound for Portugal, whence he was transported to Rome, and 
 later to Bassein near Bombay, where he was interned in the 
 monastery of the Franciscans. In 1558 he again reached his 
 see at Angamale ; but in 1567 he was for the second time taken 
 prisoner, and again transported to Rome, where he appears to 
 have been done to death. In 1559 a second bishop, Mar 
 Abraham, turned up ; but either in that same year or the 
 following one he was forcibly apprehended, to be likewise 
 instantly sent off to Portugal. Mar Abraham would appear 
 after a time to have turned round and to have been conse- 
 crated as Archbishop in Rome, and in opposition to him there 
 appeared in 1582 a rival bishop, Mar Simeon. He too was 
 craftily taken prisoner, and deported to Rome via Goa and 
 Portugal; he died either in the dungeons of the Inquisition or 
 at the stake, probably after a seventeen years' imprisonment 
 (1599). After a first unsuccessful attempt to have him removed, 
 the Jesuits left Mar Abraham, the Archbishop, in office until 
 his death, but only because he was slavishly subservient to 
 all their designs, and against his conscience submitted to and 
 abetted their romanising efforts. 
 
 Whilst the spiritual leaders of the Thomas Christians were 
 thus removed by violence, the Roman Catholics were obtaining 
 a firm foothold in the country. At Cochin a Roman Catholic 
 bishopric was founded in 1557, and occupied first by a Dominican 
 and then by a Franciscan. In the period that elapsed after 
 Mar Jacob's death in 1549, an attempt was made to smuggle in 
 a Romish bishop, Ambrosius Theseus de Montecoeli (?) among 
 the Thomas Christians by calling him the "coadjutor and 
 successor " of a certain newly appointed Archbishop Elias ; he 
 died, however, at Goa in 1557. The Jesuits chose Vaipikota, 
 near Cochin, for their headquarters, and founded there in 1581 a 
 large seminary for priests, in which, profiting by the failure of 
 the Franciscans, they insisted on the study of the language of 
 the Syrian Church. They further founded in 1579 a Malabar 
 printing establishment at Cochin, which was by no means 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 8i 
 
 Intended to publish and circulate the valuable historical and 
 ecclesiastical writings of the Thomas Christians, but rather to 
 spread far and wide amongst them, by means of the printed 
 word, Romish thoughts and ideas. The Jesuits preached, 
 catechised, and did pastoral work wherever they chose. In 
 1585, at the third Provincial Council at Goa, they won a formal 
 but complete victory over the Syrian Church ; the Archbishop, 
 Mar Abraham, now advanced in years, was forced to abjure his 
 Nestorian errors and to give his assent to all decrees that 
 should be passed with a view to reformation in his diocese. 
 But even this did not satisfy the Romanists. 
 
 When Mar Abraham died, at the end of the year 1595 or 
 early in 1596, a new Archbishop had just arrived in Goa. 
 This was Alexio de Menezes, a man as strong in character as 
 he was unscrupulous in morals. He was firmly determined to 
 shake down the fruit which had now been ripening for fully 
 half a century and to make the Syrian Church an integral part 
 of that of Rome. Stern orders were issued to all the Portu- 
 guese ports on the Indian Ocean that no Nestorian bishop 
 hailing from Mesopotamia and bound for Malabar should be 
 allowed to proceed on his journey. These orders actually 
 forced a bishop who had travelled as far as Ormuz to return 
 by the way he had come ; another, avoiding the Portuguese 
 ports by journeying through North India, died in 1600 at 
 Lahore. Thus the Thomas Christians found themselves 
 without a bishop ; and Menezes succeeded so well, by threats 
 and bribes, by cunning and main force, in silencing the 
 influential Archdeacon George, who had been appointed by 
 Mar Abraham, that he, George, was never able to summon up 
 courage to make a decided stand against the strong-handed 
 prelate. George declared, it is true, that he would never 
 swear to the Roman confession of faith, nor submit either to the 
 Pope or to the Archbishop of Goa ; and an important Synod 
 at Angamale took a solemn oath never to allow any modifica- 
 tion in matters of creed, and not to recognise any other bishop 
 than the one sent by the Nestorian Patriarch. Menezes, 
 however, himself hastened to Malabar, won over several of the 
 more important chiefs to his side by political negotiations, 
 gained by a skilfully assumed air of condescension and by 
 suitable presents a number of the more influential Kattanars 
 and many highly respected laymen, obtained for himself a 
 majority in the priesthood by ordaining without scruple more 
 than ninety young priests, who of course became creatures of 
 his own, and with every adjunct of magnificent and princely 
 display made a triumphal progress through the country. 
 After these preparations he summoned the famous Synod of 
 6 
 
82 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Diamper (or Udayamperur, two hours distant from Cochin), 
 which was held from the 20th to the 28th of June 1599, and 
 attended by 153 Kattanars and 660 laymen. Menezes 
 brought his very compendious decree (it contained 220 pages 
 large quarto !) all ready with him, and used his craft and authority 
 to such purpose that it was accepted, signed, and sworn to, 
 practically without alteration. 
 
 After this the old Syrian Church was thoroughly reformed 
 after the Romish model. Scarcely a relic of its ancient ecclesi- 
 astical usages was retained except the Church language, 
 which was kept for the time being, for expediency's sake. 
 The old Church literature had either to submit to thorough 
 emendation, in the Romish sense, or be burnt. It is to this 
 vandalism that we must attribute the scarcity of reliable 
 information concerning the earlier history of the Thomas 
 Church. The celibacy of the clergy was introduced, and 
 the hitherto lawful marriages and happy family life of 
 the Kattanars mercilessly broken up. Confirmation, com- 
 munion in one kind, statues of the saints on altars and church 
 walls, and, above all, the unpopular auricular confession — in 
 short, all distinctive Romish rites and ordinances, were intro- 
 duced without the slightest comprehension of the historical 
 uniqueness of the ancient Church. In saying this we must 
 not overlook the fact that the synodical decree put an end to 
 many abuses and made many changes for the better. Thus 
 the Syrian Church was divided into seventy-five parishes, and 
 fast-binding parochial ordinances were made ; the marriageable 
 age for young men was fixed at fourteen, and for young women 
 at twelve ; arrangements were made for the pastoral care of 
 the scattered and isolated congregations in the mountains 
 and in the south ; and an active missionary propaganda was 
 inculcated. 
 
 In connection with the Synod a careful general visitation 
 of all the churches throughout the country was entered upon, 
 during which the new ordinances were introduced to every 
 church and congregation. To crown the whole work, the Jesuit 
 Roz was in 1601 appointed Head of the Syrian Church, and 
 consecrated as Bishop of Angamale, and in 1605 Archbishop of 
 Kranganur — a new position, designed to replace the old bishopric 
 of Angamale. This archbishopric was further so demarcated 
 from the elder diocese of Cochin (created in 1557) that it 
 assumed the oversight of the old Syrian Church in the serras 
 (hill country) and of the Jesuit Mission at Madura, whilst the 
 i3ishop of Cochin superintended the congregations gathered 
 by Jesuit missionaries at Travancore and on the Fisher 
 coast. 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 83 
 
 (g) The Schism in the Syrian Chujrh and the Stibseguent 
 Development of the Separated Churches 
 
 During the following half-century all movement was retro- 
 gressive. Whereas from 1550 to 1596 the influence of the 
 Jesuits and the Church of Rome had gradually increased to 
 such an extent that finally it appeared to have entirely over- 
 whelmed the older Church, there now developed decade by 
 decade a secret animosity against the Jesuits, and an estrange- 
 ment between the Syrian Church on the one hand and the 
 Portuguese and the Church of Rome on the other. It is true 
 that in 1602 an Archbishop sent by the Patriarch of Babylon 
 was unable to procure for himself any recognition, and was 
 quickly sent about his business by main force. But by 1620 
 serious dissensions had broken out. Archbishop Roz, on the eve 
 of a long tour, had appointed the Rector of the Jesuit College at 
 Vaipikota as Vicar-General, and had thereby mortally offended 
 the aged Archdeacon George. The latter, with the greater 
 number of the Thomas Christians, disowned the Archbishop 
 and exercised for four years all episcopal rights himself. Only 
 with great difficulty was this discord brought to an end. 
 Under Roz's successors, Etienne de Brito (1624-1641) and the 
 courageous but ambitious Francisco Garzia (1641-1659), matters 
 came to a yet more serious pass. The Jesuits felt themselves 
 the actual masters of the country ; they bestowed no considera- 
 tion on the native Kattanars, they attacked their rights and 
 interfered with the just discharge of their duties, and gradually 
 they endeavoured to replace even the Syrian language of the 
 Church by the Latin — with which they were, of course, better 
 acquainted — in order to win over one parish after another, one 
 congregation after another. They were so little loved, nay so 
 detested, that in 1628 Archdeacon George made a direct 
 request of the Pope to allow Dominicans to work in the country 
 as well as Jesuits, and to appoint a Dominican who was well 
 known to be thoroughly cognisant with Syrian, Francisco 
 Donate, to be coadjutor and successor to Etienne de Brito. 
 The Jesuits, all-powerful in Rome as well as in India, were able 
 to foil this project. In 1632 a Synod at Eddapally (Rapolin) 
 addressed a complaint to the King of Spain and Portugal to 
 the effect that the subsidies sent out by the king were never 
 distributed to the indigenous priests, and that the Archbishop 
 filled up vacancies amongst the clergy in purely arbitrary 
 fashion and contrary to all precedent. It was the dull rolling 
 of thunder in the distance, giving notice of the near approach 
 of a storm. In the year 1653 a new bishop, named Atalla {i.e. 
 Theodore or Ahatalla), who had been consecrated by the 
 
84 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Nestorian Patriarch, arrived in India via Surat and Milapur. 
 On August 3rd, 1653, he was recognised by the Portuguese in 
 the Thomas Church at Milapur, was taken into custody, trans- 
 ported by sea to Goa, and there dehvered up to the Inquisition 
 and burnt at the stake. The Thomas Christians, who at the 
 first news of his capture had marched to Cochin armed and 
 25,000 strong, in order to set Atalla free when his ship touched 
 there, were told that he had been drowned during trans- 
 shipment in the roadstead off Cochin. At the news of this 
 fresh deed of violence the Christians rose en masse and 
 assembled at Matanger (Muttancherry), near Cochin. There 
 they swore a most solemn oath, at the foot of the cross before 
 the church, that no Jesuit should ever again be recognised as 
 bishop in their country, that all Jesuits should be driven out of 
 the land, and that the Archbishop of Kranganur should never 
 again show his face in their midst. A few weeks later, the 
 Council of a convent at Mangate (Alangata), on the strength 
 of a letter written by Atalla shortly before his deportation, 
 took the unheard-of step of ordaining as bishop Archdeacon 
 Thomas, George's successor. Of the 200,000 Thomas Christians 
 only a paltry 400 remained true in Rome. Such was the net 
 result of TOO years of intrigue, oppression, and violence on the 
 part of the Jesuits. 
 
 By this one event the Romish See saw the entire success 
 of 150 years' work put in the balance. It adopted what 
 was perhaps the wisest policy under the circumstances : 
 Archbishop Francisco Garzia was deposed, all consideration 
 for the Jesuits was put on one side, and four barefoot friars 
 (Carmelites) were instantly dispatched to Malabar with instruc- 
 tions to rescue for Rome all that it was still possible to rescue. 
 Concessions were then made to the Thomas Christians : secular 
 clergy — such as were the Kattanars without exception, in 
 contradistinction to the monks of the various European orders — 
 were made eligible for all ecclesiastical offices ; as far as possible 
 only native priests were to hear auricular confession, etc. The 
 Carmelites were received in Malabar with suspicion, and by the 
 majority with enmity. But they went to work very skilfully ; 
 they negotiated with the Portuguese, with the irregularly 
 ordained bishop, with the Kattanars and with the congregations; 
 they were tireless in the tours which they made from one end of 
 the country to the other, holding conferences and synods 
 wherever they went. One of them — an Italian, Joseph of 
 Santa Maria — was created bishop in 1659. The native bishop. 
 Mar Thomas, was once within an ace of falling into their hands, 
 having been enticed into their immediate neighbourhood under 
 pretext of negotiations by word of mouth. And the end of 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 85 
 
 these machinations, which were frequently the reverse of 
 honourable, was that eight^'-four congregations again joined the 
 Church of Rome, thirty-two only maintaining their independence. 
 Since that time the former have borne the name of the " United 
 Syrians " of the " Romo-Syrian Church," and the others have 
 retained their original designation, " the Thomas Christians," — 
 or sometimes simply the " Syrians." This was, for Rome, 
 concealing defeat by victory ; but for Portugal it was too late. 
 The very year of the Diamper Synod, when the Portuguese 
 State and Church were at the very zenith of their power beneath 
 the rule — soon to become the viceregal rule — of Menezes, was 
 the turning-point of its whole colonial history. In 1600 were 
 founded the two great commercial East India Companies, the 
 Dutch and the English — in whose hands lay the future of Asia. 
 The seventeenth century was the epoch of Dutch colonial 
 expansion and conquest. By their conquest of Colombo 
 (May 1 2th, 1656) the last Portuguese position in Ceylon fell into 
 their hands. In 1658 they captured Manar, Tuticorin, and 
 Negapatam ; in 1 661, Quilon, the most southern port of Malabar; 
 in 1662, Kranganur; and on January 6th, 1663, Cochin, the last 
 Portuguese stronghold on the Malabar coast. By these losses 
 the supremacy of Portugal was definitely overthrown. If the 
 Portuguese had hoped to find in the Thomas Christians a firm 
 base from which they might proceed to the conquest and 
 dominion of all India, they had only their own crooked policy 
 and that of the Jesuits to thank for it, that the Thomas 
 Christians would not raise a finger to save them from their 
 downfall. From this time forward the Syrian Church, the 
 United Syrians as well as the Thomas Christians, disappears 
 from the realm of politics in which, greatly to its own 
 detriment, it had played so important a part for a century and 
 a half 
 
 In the newly acquired ports the Dutch at once proceeded to 
 the most extreme measures against the Romanist missionaries 
 and priests and against the churches and monasteries they had 
 erected. All the European clergy were banished from the land 
 and their churches and homes levelled with the ground. Only 
 the wily Carmelites, and of them only the most influential, were 
 able by strategy and falsehood and, at times, by cleverly making 
 the most of their scientific fads and hobbies, to secure the 
 protection of the new lords of the country. Actually to remain 
 in the land themselves they did not at first dare to hope ; but 
 their bishop, Joseph, before taking his departure, consecrated to 
 the episcopacy Alexander a Campo, a Malabarese Kattanar 
 belonging to the old and respected priestly family of the 
 Palamattams of Korolongata. However, as early as 1673 the 
 
86 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Dutch Governor, Hendrick Adrian van Rheede (1669-1677) 
 accorded the Carmelites permission, upon a tablet of brass, to 
 found a great establishment for their Order one and a half miles 
 to the north of Cochin. They therefore erected one in a grove 
 of palms (Paramba, near Tattaraceri) which had been presented 
 to them by the Rajah of Cochin. In missionary literature the 
 place, so shortly to become famous, is known as Verapoli. The 
 favour shown by the Dutch officials to the Carmelites soon 
 proved to be of advantage to the United (Romish) Syrians also. 
 In all their treaties with native rajahs, especially with the Rajah 
 of Cochin, the Dutch insisted upon their being recognised as the 
 protectors of the United Syrians. As this prerogative included 
 not only supreme jurisdiction over the Christians and powers of 
 sequestration over the whole of their property, but likewise a 
 right of revision with regard to all new taxes which the various 
 rajahs might levy upon their Christian subjects, they were 
 thus endowed with far-reaching influence upon the Christian 
 congregations. They exercised it on the whole both with 
 moderation and justice, so that in this respect the Roman 
 Catholic Christians enjoyed a highly advantageous peace — 
 vastly different from the condition of the Thomas Christians, who 
 were distrusted and held at a distance by the Dutch, and who 
 therefore were able to defend themselves from the oppression 
 and extortions of the numerous native rulers only with the 
 greatest difficulty. 
 
 Nevertheless, the following century was not a happy one 
 even for the Romish congregations. During the first decades 
 they were under bishops born in India, as Europeans were no 
 longer allowed to exercise episcopal functions. Roman Catholic 
 historians flatter themselves that their Church was the first to 
 give native bishops to India. Their experience, however, of 
 such bishops was far from encouraging. The first, Alexander, 
 was a weak, uneducated fellow, whose sole claim to respect was 
 that he belonged to the highly respected family of the 
 Palamattams. When, in 1677, Rafael Figuerade Salgado, a 
 Portuguese born in Cochin, was appointed as his coadjutor, the 
 Palamattams took offence, and strove against the Carmelites both 
 with poison and with treachery. Rafael himself, a crafty and 
 ambitious man, no sooner felt his authority assured than he 
 turned sharp round upon his patrons the Carmelites, and 
 endeavoured to make their very existence miserable by every 
 means in his power. Rafael's enmity and open-handed opposi- 
 tion caused the Carmelites to implore Rome (1687) for another 
 coadjutor, who should be ready at any time to step into the 
 episcopal chair. In the meantime the aged Alexander had 
 appointed his relative, George a Campo, Vicar-General, in the 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 87 
 
 hope that in due time the latter might succeed to his own 
 bishopric. Rafael, however, defended himself energetically from 
 all these rivals, and contrary to all justice and church discipline 
 excommunicated George, There were thus three parties, that 
 of the Carmelites, that of Rafael, and that of the two a Campos, 
 all of them violently opposed to one another. After Rafael's 
 death in 1695, his successor, Custodius, a former Brahman — who, 
 however, died in 1696 — was equally unwelcome to the Carmelites. 
 Thus it was a good thing when in 1698, on the intervention of 
 the Emperor Leopold of Austria, the Dutch granted permission 
 for a European Carmelite to be appointed bishop. The only 
 title open to him was that of Apostolic Vicar, for the Jesuit 
 Archbishops of Kranganur still laid claim to the episcopal office 
 in the Syrian Church ; he had, however, both the rank and the 
 jurisdiction of a bishop ; his see was the already mentioned 
 Verapoli, Thus Verapoli became the see of a newly created 
 bishopric held by a European. The Carmelites were fortunate, 
 at any rate for a time, in the choice of their bishops. The first, 
 Peter Paul of Palma, was highly respected both in India and 
 in Europe, being simultaneously agent and ambassador extra- 
 ordinary of the Emperor Leopold in Persia and in the Moghul 
 Empire. He died in the year 1700, however. The second 
 bishop, Angelus Franciscus (1700- 17 10), and the third, John the 
 Baptist, Bishop of Limira in partibiis (17 14-1750), served the 
 United Syrians very well indeed. 
 
 Yet once again, two powerful enemies from without con- 
 fronted these men also, making their lives bitter indeed. The 
 Jesuits, it is true, had been discarded by the Pope in 1653, satis 
 ctfremonie, and Archbishop Francisco Garzia, a member of their 
 Order, had been deposed. But this combative and unscrupulous 
 Society was the last in the world to calmly abandon the rich 
 spoils of the Syrian Church to the Carmelites. They were 
 resolved at any cost to regain the influence they had lost in 
 Malabar. In view of the political convulsion of the country 
 and the petty jealousies of the various rajahs, it did not prove 
 a difficult task to erect headquarters for their machinations, to 
 replace those they had lost at Vaipikota. They erected a new 
 Jesuit Seminary at Ambalacada, a town in the dominions of the 
 Samorin of Calicut, but lying very close to the districts in which 
 the densest Christian population resided ; and they further 
 strengthened their position by founding the two adjacent 
 stations of Pucotta and Puttencherry. Their influence became 
 still more minatory when they allied themselves with another 
 and yet more dangerous enemy of the Carmelites. By the Bull 
 of 1600, "In supremo militantis ecclesiae solio," the rights of 
 patronage over the bishopric of Cochin as well as over the 
 
88 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 archbishopric of Kranganur had been handed over to the 
 Crown of Portugal. When the colonial power of Portugal had 
 melted away like a mirage, both the civic and ecclesiastical 
 authorities still clung to this gleam of a vanished glory, and the 
 King of Portugal steadfastly maintained his right to appoint the 
 Archbishops of Kranganur and the Bishops of Cochin. This 
 was quite harmless, so long as the bishops were merely titular 
 dignitaries, who were not allowed to set foot within their 
 dioceses. But it became a serious matter when the Jesuits 
 allied themselves with the Crown of Portugal in order to have 
 members of their Order nominated to both sees, and used this 
 semblance of right in order to regain by craft and main force 
 their ascendancy over the United Syrians. Against Arch- 
 bishops Joao Ribeiro (1701-1716), xA.ntonio Pimentel (1721- 
 1752), Alois de Vasconcelles (1753-1755), and Salvator a 
 Regibus (1756-1777) of Kranganur, and Bishops Francois de 
 Vasconcelles (1721-1743) and Clement Jose Leitao (1745-1778) 
 of Cochin, the Carmelites waged long and fearful war. It is 
 a strange spectacle to see the two Orders engaged for seventy- 
 five long years in the direst conflict. The Jesuits fought with 
 any and every kind of weapon, irrespective of honour or fame. 
 If the Syrians, as a result of their former doleful experiences, 
 had not had such an inborn antipathy to the Jesuits, the issue 
 of the fight would have been still more serious. Only with the 
 suppression of the Order of Jesuits by Pope Clement xiv. did 
 this dangerous rivalry come to an end. But even then the 
 Carmelites were not to enjoy the spoils of victory. Incited 
 by the example of the Thomas Christians, who were growing 
 in every direction under the rule of their native bishops, 
 the United Syrian Church was seized (in 1787) with an 
 ardent desire to have a native Malabarese as bishop. So 
 clamorously and rebelliously did they demand this, that the 
 Carmelites had to summon the Dutch and even the heathen 
 rajahs to their aid, in order to bring their congregations into 
 subjection ! 
 
 The history of the Thomas Christians, however, was likewise 
 far from encouraging. After the schism they had made Arch- 
 deacon Thomas their bishop by a somewhat remarkable method 
 of procedure. This Thomas belonged to the main branch of 
 the Palamattam family of Korolongata. Now in former times 
 it had certainly been the hereditary privilege of this family to 
 have the archdeacons selected from amongst its members ; the 
 bishops had generally been, or ought to have been, men con- 
 secrated by the Nestorian Patriarch himself — i.e. they were 
 mostly Mesopotamians. Now, however, the Palamattam family 
 went a step farther and claimed the episcopal dignity as its right 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 89 
 
 also. From 1653 down to the end of the eighteenth century 
 an unbroken line of seven or eight Thomas a Campos had 
 occupied the see, the last few of them bearing the episcopal 
 designation of Mar Dionysius. But there had arisen a great 
 difficulty. It was one of the firm, inviolable traditions of this 
 ancient Church that a bishop could only be consecrated by 
 another bishop or by some still more elevated dignitary. 
 Where was this ordinatory bishop always to be found ? That 
 was the ever recurring question. In the first instance, in the 
 case of Mar Thomas i. (1665) — called by his admirers "the 
 Great" — a bishop named Mar Gregor was discovered, who had 
 been sent out by the Jacobite Patriarch at Mardin, and he 
 performed the ceremony of consecration ; and thereby the 
 unexpected happened, an occurrence still wholly inexplicable : 
 the entire community of the Thomas Christians, who from time 
 immemorial, probably from the days of their founders, had been 
 Nestorians, quietly and silently became Jacobites. The entire 
 proceeding, both on account of the suddenness with which it 
 was carried out, as well as of its, apparently, wholly peaceful 
 character, is enigmatical. For even in an Oriental Church such 
 a conversion from one extreme to the other, from dyophisitism 
 to eutychianism, is without all precedent. The same difficulty 
 arose about the consecration of each successive bishop. In 1685 
 there arrived at one and the same time three important Jacobite 
 bishops, amongst them a Maphrian, — the highest dignitary after 
 the Patriarch, — but they set to work in a very unlovable fashion 
 to reform the congregations, and the Maphrian was far more 
 anxious to be recognised as bishop himself than to ordain Mar 
 Thomas to the office. In 1747 a certain Mar Johannes crossed 
 over in a Dutch ship from Basra in order to perform the 
 ceremony of consecration ; but he stole the silver vessels from 
 the churches, stormed and thundered against the images of 
 Christ and against the crosses — and departed without ordaining 
 Mar Thomas! In 1751 the Mar Thomas of that day ordered 
 from the Dutch East India Company, at a cost of 4000 rupees, 
 a consecrating bishop ! Three were soon on the spot : the first, 
 Basilius Shekerallah, who was appointed by the Jacobite 
 Patriarch "Archbishop of Malabar" {N.B. for 28 congrega- 
 tions !) ; the second, Gregory John, who wanted to be 
 " Metropolitan " ; and a third, by name Namentallah. The 
 three Syrian prelates made themselves at home in Malabar ; 
 they lived on the best of everything at the expense of the well- 
 to-do congregations, but not until 1772 — that is, after a residence 
 of twenty-one years — did it occur to them to consecrate poor 
 Mar Thomas. 
 
 It was, however, a far more vexatious and serious matter 
 
90 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 when the Nestorians began making persistent efforts to regain 
 possession of the province they had lost. Probably Mar Simon 
 was an emissary of theirs as early as 1701. He was captured 
 by the Carmelites, imprisoned for twenty years in Pondi- 
 cherry, and mysteriously died in a monastery there in the 
 year 1720. 
 
 More dangerous were the machinations of the Nestorian, 
 Mar Gabriel (1705-1730), who, now in the guise of a zealous 
 adherent of Rome, now as a kindly and conciliatory friend of 
 the Jacobites, won so considerable an influence amongst United 
 Syrians and Thomas Christians alike that at one time the 
 former were on the point of renouncing Rome and attaching 
 themselves to Mar Gabriel. Forty-two congregations — that is, 
 half the Romo-Syrians^cast in their lot for a short time with 
 him, and the Jacobite bishop felt the ground so shaky beneath 
 his feet that he wrote again and again to the Jacobite Patriarch 
 begging for priests of learning to be sent to carry on the fight 
 with Mar Gabriel. He wrote in vain, for his letters fell into 
 the hands of conceited Dutch savants (Professors Schaaf, father 
 and son) who plumed themselves more than a little in the 
 scientific world upon this Syrian correspondence, but were 
 withal so ignorant that they did not even know the place of 
 residence of the Patriarch of Antioch. Mar Gabriel, however, 
 died, and the danger passed over. 
 
 Whilst both the Syrian Churches were thus distraught by 
 internal unrest, strife, and division, there came a great change 
 over the world of politics. The Dutch had not recognised the 
 importance of the ports of Malabar for the domination of India ; 
 in 1746 a Dutch Governor-General even wrote to Cochin that 
 he wished the sea had devoured all Malabar a hundred years 
 before. They were therefore content to allow the little and 
 hitherto unimportant state of Travancore, by a long succession 
 of generally victorious expeditions carried on between 1733 
 and 1 76 1, to unite under its rule all the tiny states into which 
 Southern Malabar had hitherto been divided, and to build up 
 therefrom a by no means despicable kingdom. This brought 
 under the rule of these rajahs of Travancore almost the entire 
 Christian Church of Malabar. It is gratifying to be able to 
 add that, after a short period of destruction during which many 
 old churches were destroyed, the rajahs were for the most part 
 friendly to the Syrian Churches, and they particularly mani- 
 fested their favour to the Romo-Syrians. More terrible was 
 the fearful hurricane let loose upon the north of Malabar by the 
 upstart Haidar Ali and his fanatical son, Tipu Sahib. Haidar 
 Ali conquered the whole of the west coast from Mangalore to 
 Kranganur in the years 1762-1766; but at any rate we can 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 
 
 91 
 
 affirm that he was at least tolerant towards the Christians. 
 On April 15th, 1790, however, his bloodthirsty son Tipu Sahib 
 broke upon the Christian districts to the south and south-east of 
 Kranganur, and for five weeks raged hither and thither with 
 unspeakable cruelty. Twenty-seven churches, amongst them 
 many of the finest and most ancient in the country, were burnt 
 to the ground. Partly by the sword of the ruthless Mu- 
 hammadans, partly by the diseases which followed in the 
 wake of the invader, there died at this time, according to 
 contemporary estimates, fully one-tenth of all the Thomas 
 Christians. From this knock-down blow, inflicted upon the 
 venerable and ancient Church by the barbarity of fanatics, it 
 has never recovered ; its wealth had vanished. It was fortunate 
 that the English as allies of the Rajah of Travancore regarded 
 the incursion of the wild hordes of Tipu Sahib as a casus 
 belli and that they immediately dispatched an army to Tipu's 
 capital. Consequently he was obliged to withdraw his troops 
 from Travancore as quickly as possible. The English attack 
 it was, therefore, which prevented the two Syrian Churches 
 from complete annihilation. 
 
 Five years later, in 1795, the English captured Cochin, and 
 this proved the death-blow to the rather tame Dutch colonial 
 power in Malabar. The Dutch had had far too much of the 
 small tradesman about them, they never rose to an under- 
 standing of their mighty opportunities and duties in India. 
 None lamented them when their dominion came to a sudden 
 end. 
 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the Latin 
 Christians in Malabar {i.e. those who were entirely romanised 
 and who had abandoned the Syrian language in church services) 
 numbered about 100,000; the Roman Catholic Syrians, who 
 retained the Syrian language in the churches as well as other 
 Syrian customs, 90,000 ; and the Jacobite Syrians, 50,000. The 
 last named possessed 32-35 churches, and the adherents of 
 Rome some 85.^ As we have it on the best authority that the 
 population of the entire district inhabited by the Christians did 
 not exceed two millions, it would thus appear that the Christians 
 with 240,000 souls composed about 12 per cent, of the entire 
 community. 
 
 ^ This is the estimate of Paulinus in 1787. Bishop Middleton in 1816 found 
 66 Roman Catholic Syrian churches, and 18 belonging to the Latin Christians, 
 with a net total of 80,000 adherents, in the diocese of Verapoli (Germann, 
 p. 635). Fenn the missionary reckoned the independent Syrians in 1818 at 
 70,000 {ibid. p. 646), and Bishop Wilson of Calcutta in 1835 at 100,000 souls {ibid. 
 P- 695)- 
 
92 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 (h) The Decline of Roman Catholic Missions 
 
 The number of Roman Catholic Christians in India at the 
 close of the seventeenth century is said to have been two and 
 a half millions ; this is one of the tremendous numbers which 
 we come across now and again in the histories of Roman 
 missions. All means of checking them are lacking in the 
 materials at our disposal, and so far as we know it has never 
 been attempted. In the Madura Mission, their most brilliant 
 achievement of the seventeenth century, it was computed, as we 
 have already remarked, that they had about 150,000 adherents 
 in the year 1703 (Mullbauer, p. 237), of whom, however, we can 
 only verify 46,482. In 1750, or half a century later, Florentius, 
 a reputedly zealous bishop of the divided Syrian Church in 
 Travancore and coadjutor of Malabar, states that there were 
 about 150,000 who belonged to the Romish Church (Germann, 
 p. 519). To this must be added the great Portuguese colonies 
 at Goa, Diu, Bassein, Cochin, Negapatam, etc., in which, accord- 
 ing to Dubois, four-fifths of the entire population was nominally 
 Roman Catholic {Basle Missionary Magazine, 1818, p. 158). 
 The Christian congregations of the Augustinian missions in 
 Bengal numbered in those their best days, 22,000 Christians. 
 And then we have also the nominally Christian masses of 
 Ceylon. Therefore it is by no means impossible that in the 
 year 1701 there should have existed about 2,000,000 nominal 
 Catholic Christians in India and Ceylon. However, during the 
 course of the eighteenth century there ensued such a rapid, 
 such a hopeless collapse of Roman Catholic missionary effort 
 that by the close of the century nothing was left of it save 
 ruins. Four principal factors contributed to bring about this 
 rapid downfall. 
 
 In the first place, Romish missions had advanced along with 
 the colonial extension of the Portuguese. The King of Portugal 
 enjoyed rights of patronage over all bishoprics, cures, and 
 missionary appointments. No missionary might journey to 
 India without a Portugese permit, none land there save from 
 a Portuguese ship. A claim was even raised that no papal 
 decretal should carry legal weight in India unless stamped with 
 a Portuguese " placet" {Allgem. Miss. Zeitschrift, 1903, p. 522). 
 Exactly in proportion to the advantage derived from this union 
 of Church and State as long as the star of Portugal was in the 
 ascendant, was the extremely serious condition of things the 
 moment that star began to decline. We have already seen the 
 obstacles Portugal placed during the eighteenth century in 
 the way of the landing of independent orders of friars and 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 93 
 
 other missionaries intent upon entering the country. Portugal, 
 however, had neither the means nor the wish to provide 
 adequately for the needs of Indian Christendom. And it laid 
 the greatest possible hindrances in the way of every enterprise 
 undertaken without its specific approbation, whether by the 
 Romish Church or other colonial powers. 
 
 Then, in the second place, with the rise of Holland, England, 
 France, and Denmark as colonial powers, a change of opinion 
 was continually going on in the minds of the Indians themselves. 
 Whereas under the sole sovereignty of the Portuguese, the 
 Indian people had regarded it as their fate that they should be 
 forced to accept the religion of their imperious masters, they 
 now came to see that their acceptance of Christianity, or their 
 ultimate relapse into heathenism, was a matter to be decided 
 by their own free will. Precisely in that district on the west 
 coast where the Portuguese had, with Jesuit and Franciscan 
 help, romanised whole provinces by main force, the fanatical 
 Muhammadan, Tipu Sahib of the Mysore, now adopted 
 similarly forcible measures in order to convert the masses of 
 nominal Christians to Islam. Can we wonder, then, that he had 
 successes so great as to be humiliating to us who read of them, 
 and that, according to the Abbe Dubois {Basle Missionary 
 Magazine, 1818, p. 169), 60,000 Christians accepted Muham- 
 madanism without making the slightest demur? 
 
 Further, the leaders of the missionary movement since the 
 time of Xavier had been the Jesuits. Their Order was sup- 
 pressed in Portugal in the year 1759, in France in 1762, and in 
 1773 in every other country, by Pope Clement XIV. Whereas 
 in the first half of the eighteenth century the stream of Jesuit 
 missionaries proceeding to India was pitiably small, it now 
 dried up almost altogether, and the mission fields became 
 desolate. 
 
 And finally, the blast of revolution felt throughout Europe 
 during the last third of the eighteenth century shook 
 Church as well as State to its very foundation, and kept 
 men's minds in such a constant state of excitement that 
 the far-off mission fields in lands across the sea were wholly 
 forgotten. 
 
 The French father, I'Abbe Dubois, for thirty-two years a 
 missionary in the Mysore, waiting on December 15th, 181 5, 
 in a letter which created much discussion at the time {Basle 
 Missiotiary Magazine, 1818, p. 156 et seg., Dubois' Letters, p. 57 
 et seq.), describes in truly disconsolate wise the hopeless condition 
 of Roman Catholic missions, and we are able to corroborate the 
 justice of his remarks from contemporary sources. According 
 to his account, there were at that time 300,000 Romish 
 
94 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Christians in the archbishopric of Goa, of whom some 200,000 
 belonged to the still remaining Portuguese colonies of Goa, 
 Daman, and Diu, and about 100,000 in Ceylon, 70,000 in the arch- 
 bishopric of Kranganur, of which the Madura Mission formed a 
 part ; 60,000 in the bishopric of Cochin, and 50,000 in the 
 bishopric of St. Thomas of Milapur, in the neighbourhood of 
 Madras. All these were under Portuguese patronage. There 
 were, further, the cures of three Apostolic Vicars sent direct from 
 Rome and wholly independent of Portugal — Bombay with 
 10-12,000 Christians, Pondicherry with 34-36,000, and Verapoli 
 with 120,000; and finally the Mission of the Italian Capucines 
 in North India with about 12,000 adherents. That gives a total 
 of about 660,000 Roman Catholic Christians, barely a third 
 of their numbers a century earlier, and these remnants of a 
 better day were in such a truly deplorable state morally and 
 spiritually that one is tempted to regard the pessimistic descrip- 
 tions of Abbe Dubois as being almost exaggerated in their gloom. 
 He writes : " By far the greater part of them — in fact I might 
 say the whole — present nothing but an empty shadow, a hollow 
 mockery of Christianity ; for in the long period of twenty-five 
 years during which I learnt to know them most intimately and 
 lived amongst them as their spiritual director, I can't say that 
 I once found, anywhere, one single downright and straight- 
 forward Christian amongst the natives of India " (as above, p. 166). 
 " Several of them are fairly well instructed, and know what are 
 the duties of a Christian ; but far and away the larger part of 
 them live in the crassest ignorance, and their entire religion is 
 confined to the observance of a few external ordinances and 
 the repetition of certain forms of prayer without possessing one 
 single spark of the inward practical spirit of Christianity. The 
 Sabbath is either but just remembered or w^holly disregarded, 
 and all their religious exercises are performed either simply 
 because of custom or a vain desire to please men rather than 
 God" {ibid. p. 168). In 1823, Dubois returned wholly dis- 
 couraged to France, and published his Letters on the State of 
 Christimiity in India (London, 1823; Weimar, 1824), in which 
 he gave a connected description of his crushing experiences, 
 and set out more fully his convictions thereon. " This religion 
 (Christianity), which formerly was an object of indifference or 
 contempt, has now, as I can testify from personal observation, 
 ^vell-nigh become an object of abhorrence ; it is certain 
 that for sixty years past not one single proselyte has been 
 made. Before half a century has elapsed there will not 
 be the slightest trace of this Christianity remaining among 
 the Hindus." " I must confess it with shame and humiliation 
 that there was not a single member of them (the Christian 
 
EARLY MISSIONS 95 
 
 in his own spheres of labour) of whom it could be said 
 that he had accepted Christianity save for some objectionable, 
 secondary consideration" (cf. Basle Miss. Mag.^ 1825, p. 137 
 et seq.)} 
 
 ^ It is almost incredible in view of these facts that Marshall, whom Janssen praises 
 as a classic amongst Roman Catholic historians, should write in his Die Christlkhen 
 Missionen, vol. i. p. 421: "From 1760-1820 scarcely a single thing was done 
 on behalf of Catholic missions and their numerous adherents. How did the 
 Catholic Christians of India stand such a test? The answer of history to this 
 question reveals one of the most wonderful and surprising facts in the whole history 
 of the Christian Church. It would almost appear as though God by a special and 
 wondrous providence had determined to justify His servants in the eyes of the whole 
 world, as though He had left their work to apparently inevitable dissolution and 
 decay, in order to prove that neither the world nor Satan, neither persecution nor 
 treachery nor neglect, had it in their power to extinguish the life that was in this 
 Church. And when after sixty years' silence and affliction they were sought out, a 
 large and living nucleus was discovered where only the bodies of the dead might have 
 been expected. ... In spite of this, the astounding fact was brought to light that 
 after half a century of total (?) neglect there still remained over a million Catholics v/ho 
 with inflexible constancy clung to the faith delivered to their fathers. . . . This was 
 the surprising result of a period of testing that is without parallel in the chronicles of 
 Christendom." More honourable Catholic writers like Father Huonder, at the 
 Catholic Festival held at Crefeld in 1898, frankly admit that Roman Catholic missions 
 at the beginning of the nineteenth century lay nearly everywhere in ruins [Allgem. 
 Miss. Zeitimg, 1898, p. 481). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 THE DANISH MISSION 
 
 I. The Historical Background ^ 
 
 The historical background of this justly famous epoch in the 
 story of missions was dark and complicated. The dominion of 
 the Portuguese which in the sixteenth century had been undis- 
 puted over all countries bordering the Indian Ocean had to give 
 way in the seventeenth to that of the Dutch ; their Indian 
 possessions dwindled down to the districts around Goa and 
 Daman, the island of Diu, and scattered trading-factories along 
 the west coast. The sole traces of the extensive influence which 
 they had hitherto possessed are to be found in the fact that 
 during the two succeeding centuries European half-castes in 
 India were bluntly termed " Portuguese," they spoke as a rule a 
 kind of broken Portuguese, and were regarded as the lawful 
 province of Roman Catholic missions — no very favourable testi- 
 mony to the moral condition of this age of civilisation and to the 
 missionary work conducted therein ! Although the Dutch in the 
 seventeenth century considered themselves lords of the Indian 
 Ocean and of the trade of India, yet it was only Ceylon that they 
 regarded as their own exclusive territory. As regards the rest 
 of India, they were not unwilling to allow other Protestant 
 powers to enter into commercial competition with them and to 
 build factories along the coast. They also allowed Catholic 
 France to establish itself both in Northern and in Southern 
 India. Thus at the dawn of the eighteenth century the Indian 
 coast-line was confusedly dotted with the factories and forts of 
 different and rival nations. Beginning at the southern extremity 
 of the Tamil coast and going northwards, we find the Dutch 
 quartered in Tuticorin and Negapatam, the French in Karikal, 
 the Danes in Tranquebar, the English in Cuddalore, the French 
 in Pondicherry, the Dutch in Sadras, the English in Madras, the 
 Dutch again in Pulicat (or Palleakatta), and so on. 
 
 Then the star of Holland began to fade ; in Europe that of 
 
 ^ See Appendix K. 
 g6 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 97 
 
 Louis XIV. was in the ascendant, and it appeared to his enter- 
 prising representatives in India, the brave and skilful Generals 
 Dupleix and La Bourdonnais, and the Viceroy, Count Lally, 
 that it would be possible, taking Pondicherry as base, to found a 
 great French colonial empire. The opportunity for embarking 
 on such an enterprise was all the more favourable since Count 
 Lally, through his marriage with an Indian princess, was closely 
 connected with several of the princely houses of India. The 
 only rivals the French had to fear were the English. 
 
 It was an important hour for India as well as for England, 
 when on the last day of the sixteenth century, December 31st, 
 1600, Queen Elizabeth issued the Charter "To one Body 
 Corporate and Politik, in Deed and in Name, by the name of The 
 Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the 
 East Indies." Thus came into being the famous East India 
 Company, which for two and a half centuries (until 1858) was 
 to rule the fortunes of India, and, when its day was done, to 
 bequeath to England the most precious jewel in her crown. 
 There was a striking difference between the first Englishmen in 
 India and their contemporaries, the devout Pilgrim Fatha?s of 
 North America. The traders who went to India did not concern 
 themselves in the slightest degree with either Christianity or 
 Church. They set up harems, and in order to win favour in the 
 eyes of their mistresses they did not hesitate to worship their 
 pagan gods. They spent eighty years in India before it occurred 
 to them to erect the first Christian church. What the Hindus 
 thought of them is shown by the well-known answer given to an 
 English chaplain : " Christian religion ! Devil religion ! Chris- 
 tian much drunk, much do v/rong, much beat, much abuse 
 others." And yet there were devout men to be found amongst 
 the Directors, especially during the seventeenth century. It 
 was regarded as a notable day in London when, on December 
 22nd, 1616, a native of Masulipatam was after due instruction 
 baptized. From 1614 onwards a few chaplains were sent out to 
 India, the first of them proceeding to Surat and Masulipatam ; 
 in 1647 the first of them arrived at Madras. But their stipends 
 were miserably insufficient ; and, in spite of an express prohibi- 
 tion, many of them entered into commercial undertakings in 
 order to supplement their income, and the greater number of 
 them reflected little credit on their cloth. By the Charter of 
 1698 the Company was directly charged to see to it that "all 
 chaplains in their East Indian service shall learn the language 
 of the country, in order that they may be the better able to instruct 
 the Gentoos, heathen servants, or slaves of the Company, and of 
 its agents, in the Protestant religion." But precisely from that 
 date the interest of the Company in religion died down, only to 
 7 
 
98 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 be succeeded during the course of the eighteenth century by 
 open hostility to any and every form of missionary work. 
 
 In South India, where the English first came into contact 
 with missionary work, they held two strong positions in Madras 
 (Fort St. George) and Cuddalore (Fort St. David), but apart 
 from this they were but poorly supported, and they had no tried 
 leader fit to compare with the French generals. Under these 
 circumstances the conflict between the French and the English 
 for Indian supremacy was long and severe. Sometimes one of 
 the frequent continental wars of the eighteenth century would 
 be settled in India, sometimes the English and French troops 
 would come into collision as the respective allies of bellicose 
 Indian princes, sometimes the two rivals would take to fighting 
 on their own account. During the two decades (1740-176 1) the 
 central and northern portions of the Tamil country especially 
 were never free from the echoes of war. 
 
 In 1746 the Viceroy of Bourbon and Mauritius, Mahd de la 
 Bourdonnais, appeared with a fleet before Madras, and by a 
 trick captured that important town, the principal English base 
 in India. But through the envy and jealousy of his rival, 
 Dupleix, the Governor of Pondicherry, his triumph was short- 
 lived. He was accused by the latter of high treason and recalled 
 to France, where he languished three years in the Bastille ; when 
 at length released, he quickly sickened and died. By the peace 
 of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, Madras was given back to the 
 French. Dupleix thought the field was now clear, during the 
 confusion of affairs which followed the death of the Nawab of 
 Arcot, Asaf Jah, in 1748, to establish a Franco-Indian empire. 
 But he also fell into disgrace, was recalled and virulently 
 attacked at home, and died before judgment was pronounced 
 upon his case. Ten years later, in 1758, Count Lally once more 
 took up the ambitious design. He captured the second English 
 stronghold, Fort St. David (Cuddalore). But in 1761 the 
 English captured the chief stronghold of the French, Pondicherry, 
 and thereby gave the death-blow to the domination of the French. 
 The voluptuous and shortsighted monarchs who sat on the 
 throne of France, and their all-powerful and intriguing mis- 
 tresses, did not understand that they were surrendering in India 
 a large part of the world supremacy and future greatness of 
 France. They left their brave generals completely in the lurch, 
 and by the year 1761 English ascendancy in South India was 
 assured. 
 
 Inextricably mixed up with this struggle between the two 
 colonial powers were the wars and intrigues of the native 
 kingdoms, who were urged on, supported, and betrayed by 
 French and English in turn, and who were all involved in ruin 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 99 
 
 in this whirlwind of unrest and confusion. In the Tamil 
 country there were at that time four kingdoms of importance. 
 The kingdom of the Nawab of Arcot (the Carnatic), which was 
 one of the vast fragments of the former dominion of the Great 
 Moghul, included the present districts of North and South 
 Arcot, Chingleput, and a part of the Cauvery district ; its prin- 
 cipal towns were Vellore, Arcot, and Trichinopoly. During 
 the whole of the eighteenth century the Nawab played an im- 
 portant role. The territories of Madras and Cuddalore were 
 originally tiny portions of his wide empire which he had 
 resigned or presented to the English. In the year 1801 the 
 last Nawab was dethroned by order of the English Governor. 
 
 In the kingdom of Tanjore, which adjoined that of the 
 Nawab on the south, then the seat of the Chola dynasty, after 
 which the eastern coast is named (Coromandel = Cholaman- 
 dalam, z>. Chola Land), anew kingdom had been founded in 1674 
 upon the ruins of the old Chola government by Venkaji, a 
 brother of the bold usurper Sivaji, the founder of the Maratha 
 kingdom ; this kingdom maintained its existence, despite all 
 storms and changes, down to the year 1855. But even in the 
 second half of the eighteenth century it was so weak that in 
 1773 the Rajah Tulsi, overcome by the Nawab of Arcot in 
 league with the unscrupulous Government of Madras, was 
 deprived of his power and cast into prison. The Court of 
 Directors of the East India Company, however, did not 
 recognise this dethronement, and in 1776 they set Tulsi again 
 on the throne. When in 1787 this indolent prince was dying, 
 at the early age of forty-three, in consequence of his debauchery, 
 he appointed the missionary Schwartz as guardian to his 
 adopted ten-year-old nephew, Serfoji. At first Schwartz had 
 desired that the guardianship and regency should be con- 
 fided to Amir Singh, a half-brother of Tulsi, and Serfoji's 
 uncle. But when this prince of intriguers used his influence to 
 get himself recognised as Rajah by the unscrupulous English 
 Government, Schwartz had him set on one side, established 
 Serfoji's right to the throne, and allowed himself to be placed 
 at the head of a Council of Regency for the kingdom of 
 Tanjore. The admiration we cannot but feel at the disin- 
 terested conduct of Schwartz in this case only renders more 
 apparent the helpless condition of the kingdom of Tanjore. 
 
 In the neighbouring and ancient Pandyan kingdom of 
 Madura, which lay farther to the south, the Telugu dynasty of 
 the Nayaks had, towards 1420, built up a fairly strong Govern- 
 ment, which reached its zenith under the brilliant and pomp- 
 loving Tirumal Nayak in the seventeenth century. As, however, 
 in the course of time the feudal lords and downtrodden heads 
 
lOO HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 of the old population of Madura became more powerful and 
 sought more and more to become independent, continuous 
 dynastic disputes at length led to the formation of the little 
 kingdom of Sivaganga as a rival state in the eastern part of the 
 country. From this time the power of the Nayaks gradually 
 decayed, until at last, after the death of the last ruler of the 
 Nayak dynasty. Queen Minachiammal, the Muhammadans 
 became lords of the land in 1737. The remaining members of 
 the Nayak family were captured by the Muhammadans through 
 strategy and shut up in the Fort at Trichinopoly, where they 
 were cruelly allowed to perish from thirst. The conquest of 
 the country, however, brought little profit to the Muhammadans. 
 For four decades did the Nawab of Arcot, the English, and the 
 French fight for the possession of Madura, until at last the 
 English gained the upper hand here also ; in 1772 Ramnad was 
 captured, in 1790 the rock fortress of Dindigul, and in 1799, 
 after a long resistance, Sivaganga. 
 
 Into this scene of turmoil and strife there entered yet a 
 further disturbing element when, in 1759, Haidar Ali, the 
 commander-in-chief of the troops of the Rajah of Mysore, 
 established himself as ruler of that kingdom, and in a 
 few years (by 1766), by means of a series of successful wars, 
 extended the boundaries of the Mysore far up the west coast 
 of India and a long way inland towards the east. In alliance 
 with the French, to whose interests he was thoroughly devoted, 
 he dictated to the English at the gates of Madras, on March 
 29th, 1769, the terms of a most distasteful peace. From that 
 day the English, who had previously thought themselves sure 
 of the supremacy of the whole of South India, were made aware 
 that a new and formidable rival had taken the field, with whom 
 they would have to fight for their very existence. Thus there 
 began a new and fierce struggle lasting for over thirty years, 
 first with Haidar Ali (until his death at Chittoor on December 
 7th, 1782), and afterwards with his less fortunate son, Tipu 
 Sahib (1782-1799). As early as 1784 the latter was forced to 
 submit to the Peace of Mangalore. This did not, however, put 
 a stop to his ambition ; he aimed at nothing less than a great 
 alliance of all the Muhammadan kingdoms, in order to secure 
 for them the mastery of the world. From 1789 to 1799 another 
 succession of fierce battles was fought, which only terminated 
 on May 4th, 1799, with the storming of Seringapatam and the 
 heroic death of Tipu Sahib. 
 
 Thus throughout nearly the whole of the eighteenth century 
 the Tamil country was the scene of war and the noise of battle. 
 It was no favourable field for the peaceful labours of the 
 missionaries. Whilst often enough the fortunes of war have 
 
THE DANISH MISSION loi 
 
 opened, or have helped to open, doors hitherto closed, and to 
 give an entrance to Trichinopoly, to Tanjore, to Madura, and to 
 Tinnevelly, just as often has missionary work been interrupted, 
 the native churches have been scattered, and serious obstacles 
 placed in the way of building up and deepening the spiritual life 
 of the converts, by the universal chaos of war. It was a 
 gracious providence that the poitit de depart, and, for half a 
 century, the headquarters of mission work in the south, was the 
 little Danish settlement of Tranquebar. Here there was com- 
 parative seclusion from the storms which raged without ; here 
 it was able silently to take firm root in the alien soil of the 
 Tamil country before spreading out in all directions, and 
 directly challenging the fury of the tempest. 
 
 In 1616, at the time when the Dutch were about to drive 
 the Portuguese out of India, a second East India Company was 
 founded in Denmark, and was accorded very extensive privi- 
 leges by the King of Denmark. Under the leadership of the 
 youthful admiral Ole Gedde, the Danes landed in 1620 on the 
 island of Ceylon and on the Coromandel coast of India. An 
 attempt to found a colony in the Trincomali district came to 
 naught ; but in the Tamil country, on a narrow strip of coast 
 presented to them by the Rajah of Tanjore, the Danes built 
 Fort Dansborg, called in Tamil Taramkambacli, or Wave-town, 
 of which the familiar " Tranquebar " is a corruption. This 
 pioneer trading station, which was situated within a very short 
 distance of the rich and fertile Cauvery delta, soon developed 
 into a very busy commercial centre. Only a small amount of 
 territory belonged to the Fort ; but, being a fertile rice plain, 
 it was sufficient to support some twenty to thirty thousand 
 Tamils densely packed in fifteen or tv/enty villages. This 
 unpretentious little plot of ground was the cradle of Protestant 
 missions in India. In contrast to the European quarters in 
 other towns of India — which are generally sufficiently roomy — 
 the bungalows of the Europeans at Tranquebar are closely 
 packed together ; the stately thoroughfare called King Street, 
 in which they are principally to be found, has almost the 
 appearance of a city of modern Greece. It was intended that 
 Tranquebar should be a Danish trading colony pure and simple, 
 which should give access to, and a share in, the greatly desired 
 natural and manufactured products of India: thus it was trade 
 interests that determined the location of the colony in that 
 particular place. These Danish tradesmen, moreover, at the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century — just like the English at 
 the close of that same century — were convinced that nothing 
 could be more detrimental to their selfish gains than any 
 intermeddlinsf with the relieion of the natives, and hence from 
 
102 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the very beginning the determined opponents of missionary- 
 work sought by every means in their power to prevent 
 it being started. 
 
 2. Early Years (1706- 1720) 
 
 Frederick IV., the religiously inclined King of Denmark, had, 
 while he was still Crown Prince, conceived the idea of sending 
 the gospel to the heathen in the Danish transmarine possessions. 
 These possessions consisted of the Lesser Antilles, a part of the 
 West Indian group, the settlements on the Guinea coast of 
 West Africa, and quite recently Tranquebar. Hitherto nothing 
 whatever had been done for the cause of missions. It was 
 indeed the custom to have a Lutheran clergyman in every 
 Danish factory, and in Tranquebar itself there were two ; but 
 there is not the slightest trace of their ever having given a 
 thought to the spiritual welfare of the natives. Their only 
 activity in this direction was that they would often summarily 
 baptize the numerous natives who had been captured in the 
 never-ending piratical expeditions, and who would then be sold 
 up country as slaves for the ridiculous price of from five to ten 
 piastres. One of the Danish clergymen, Magister Jacob Worm, 
 had enjoyed at home a certain popularity as a poet, but on 
 account of sundry abusive effusions concerning the king and 
 his methods of government, had been banished to Tranquebar. 
 On his gravestone he lays claim to the title of " the Danish 
 Apostle of India." But although he had lived in Tranquebar 
 till 1694, the missionaries who arrived there ten years later 
 found no single trace of his labours. King Frederick IV. 
 thoroughly believed in the Lutheran teaching that it is one of 
 the duties devolving upon monarchs to make provision for the 
 Christianising of their non-Christian subjects. He applied to 
 his court preacher. Dr. Lutkens, who had been transferred in 
 1704 from Berlin to Copenhagen, and commissioned him to 
 provide several missionaries. As he could find no suitable 
 persons in Denmark, Lutkens wrote to his friends in Berlin, 
 and by their means Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich 
 Pliitschau entered the service of Denmark as "royal Danish 
 missionaries." 
 
 Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg, born on June 24th, 1683, at the 
 little town of Pulsnitz in the Ober Lausitz, had early in life 
 lost his parents and all his near relatives, save only one elder 
 sister. He was of such a delicate constitution that in spite 
 of all his consuming zeal for learning he was continually forced 
 by ill-health to interrupt his studies, and seriously to consider 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 103 
 
 whether he had not better retire to the quietness of his native 
 town, and there become a small farmer. Whilst attending the 
 " Gymnasium " at Gorlitz at the age of sixteen he was soundly- 
 converted to God, and from that time he was on terms of close 
 intimacy with the leaders of the Pietist movement, especially 
 with A. H. Francke and Joachim Lange. While studying for 
 a short time at Halle, a word of Abbot Breithaupt fixed itself 
 indelibly in his mind : " If anyone leads a single soul belonging 
 to a heathen people to God, it is as great a deed as though he 
 were to win a hundred souls in Europe, since the latter daily 
 enjoy sufficient opportunities of being converted." Greatly 
 harassed by religious scruples, it was only at the urgent solicita- 
 tions of his friends that he consented to obey the call to the 
 mission field. He derived no small consolation from the fact 
 that his friend and fellow-student Heinrich Plutschau of 
 Wesenberg, in Mecklenburg Strelitz, a man some six years 
 his senior, was to accompany him. There was no lack of 
 opposition to their project from the very beginning. The 
 Danish Bishop, Dr. Bornemann, who had no sympathy with 
 Pietism, caused them both to fail in their examination, and it 
 was only on a peremptory order from the king that a second 
 examination was held in which both candidates did well. 
 Their missionary project met with little save contempt or 
 ominous shaking of the head. And the East India Company, 
 who regarded the king's plan of sending out these missionaries 
 into its factories as an arbitrary usurpation of its rights, 
 dispatched in advance secret instructions to their officials to lay 
 as many obstacles as possible in the way of the inconvenient 
 newcomers. The two young missionaries sailed for India on 
 the Sophie Hedwig, and on July 9th, 1706, they arrived in the 
 roadstead of Tranquebar. This is the birthday of Protestant 
 missions in India. 
 
 A most unpleasant reception awaited them. Although they 
 had already met with much opposition on the part of the 
 captain and the Lutheran chaplain on board ship during the 
 voyage out, matters were far worse when they came to dis- 
 embark. First of all they had to wait several days on board, 
 because no one would get them a boat to take them ashore. 
 Then a friend took them on board another ship, from which they 
 set off through the foaming surf in a little boat. When they 
 were at last carried ashore by Tamils, the captain threatened the 
 latter with blows, and made for the missionaries with an uplifted 
 stick. But they had landed ; it was ten o'clock in the morning. 
 They were now forced to wait outside the town until seven in 
 the evening. At four o'clock the Commander of the place, 
 J. C. Hassius, came out to meet them, accompanied by the 
 
I04 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 magistrates and the two Danish preachers. He asked them 
 what they wanted and who had sent them. 
 
 When they showed the king's letter and seal, he became 
 suddenly quiet, and thought they might perhaps help at the 
 Danish school ; apart from that, he knew nothing they were fit 
 for. The two clerg}'men also gave them a freezing reception. 
 Night fell; the officials strode back into the town, and the 
 missionaries followed them as far as the market-place. There 
 they were left alone, but at length a secretary took pity on them 
 and brought them to the house of his father-in-law, who spoke 
 German. 
 
 This reception was unfortunately characteristic of what they 
 had to expect from the Danish authorities in the future. 
 Hassius scarcely needed the secret orders of the Company to 
 make him place every obstacle and vexation in the path of the 
 missionaries. For the most insignificant reasons he would have 
 them publicly arrested, and heap upon them the bitterest 
 reproaches in the presence of both white man and native. 
 When Pliitschau, in a sermon preached on New Year's Day 
 1707, quite inadvertently spoke of the sins of Christians and 
 the omissions of Christian Governments, both missionaries were 
 the same afternoon brought before the Governor and charged 
 with inciting to rebellion. Hassius struck Ziegenbalg on the 
 breast and forbade such "dogs" having any further communi- 
 cation with him. When another time Pliitschau had taken an 
 interest in the illegitimate child of one of the soldiers, Hassius, 
 in the presence of Dutch officers and the clergymen, threatened 
 him with a thrashing and degradation from his office. Even 
 the natives who looked on during these "judicial proceedings" 
 shook their heads at such unheard-of violence towards ministers 
 of religion. When a short time afterwards Ziegenbalg forwarded 
 to Hassius a petition on behalf of an oppressed widow that 
 was perhaps not drawn up in strictly legal form, Hassius 
 determined to allow his fury full play. He discourteously sent 
 a slave to summon the missionary to his presence. When 
 Ziegenbalg refused to answer a message communicated in 
 such a way, the guard suddenly appeared before his lodgings 
 with loaded muskets, and conducted him in his dressing-gown 
 and slippers to the fortress, where the drawbridge was im- 
 mediately pulled up behind him, as if some conspiracy had 
 been discovered. The unfortunate man was sentenced to four 
 months' imprisonment, being confined in a tiny room near the 
 kitchen, in which he was well-nigh suffocated, and kept under 
 the most rigid surveillance. No one was allowed to visit him, 
 and he was even denied pen and ink. The military and other 
 officials were commanded to have no kind of intercourse with 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 105 
 
 those " traitors to their country," the missionaries. As PKitschau, 
 however, was bold enough in his next German sermon to read 
 out passages concerning Jezebel, Antiochus, and Herod, not 
 only was preaching in German stopped, but all contributions 
 for the support of the missionaries were forbidden, and the 
 tiny Church that was being formed dispersed and scattered. 
 In other directions, too, Hassius placed obstacles in the way of 
 the missionaries. He watched their home correspondence with 
 suspicious eyes : sometimes he opened their letters, or extracted 
 portions which he destroyed. If they washed to go inland, he 
 sought by strategy or force to prevent their being admitted 
 into English or Dutch colonies. When they wished to return 
 to Denmark in order to obtain redress of their grievances, he 
 tried in the most outrageous ways to stop them. In a word, 
 ever}'thing he could do to hinder the starting of missions was 
 done. 
 
 In other respects, too, circumstances were in many ways un- 
 favourable for the two young and inexperienced missionaries. 
 They had been appointed for five years only, and as one year 
 had to be allowed for the journey out and another for the 
 journey home, they intended at first to remain in Tranquebar 
 for only three years. Was it worth while, then, to start 
 missionary work on any considerable scale, especially in view 
 of the language difficulty? Even Danish was a foreign 
 language to them. The numerous half-castes spoke broken 
 Portuguese, which was in addition the language of commerce, 
 and this also they were forced to learn. But they soon per- 
 ceived that this did not help them to get any nearer to the 
 natives. To do this there was only one course open to them — 
 they must acquire the difficult Tamil language, which none of 
 the Danish clergymen and scarcely any of the Danish officials 
 had yet learnt. Besides, it had come to be regarded as a 
 matter of course in Tranquebar that the Danes, the Dutch, and 
 the German mercenaries should adhere to the Dutch preachers, 
 whilst the half-castes, the illegitimate offspring of these same 
 Europeans, were without more ado abandoned to the Roman 
 Catholics. The Portuguese priest. Pater Guevara, jealously 
 maintained this supposed right, and regarded it as a wholly 
 unjustifiable incursion into his own sphere of influence when 
 the missionaries began to concern themseh^es about these 
 half-castes, the so-called " Portuguese " ; as he was a friend 
 of Hassius, he did all in his power to incense the already 
 infuriated Governor against his rivals. 
 
 The missionaries each received a yearly stipend of two 
 hundred Danish thalers. This was just sufficient to supply 
 them with the necessaries of life ; but how with such a sum 
 
io6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 were they to buy mission houses, to build churches, and to 
 found schools, etc.? On May ist, 1708, a Danish ship cast 
 anchor in the roadstead, and a letter from Dr. Liitkens informed 
 the missionaries that the ship had on board two thousand 
 thalers for their use. But through the carelessness of the 
 drunken captain the boat which was bringing the money 
 ashore was capsized and all its contents were lost ; and 
 although the water at the spot was only six feet deep, and 
 the money might therefore easily have been found, yet Hassius 
 and the other officials, who found a fiendish joy in this severe 
 loss of the missionaries, refrained from any energetic search for 
 the money, which was never recovered. From 1710-1713 no 
 Danish ship put into Tranquebar, the missionaries were almost 
 cut off from all communication with Europe and were at the 
 mercy of the capricious Governor. To complete the tale of their 
 misfortunes, out of three assistants who were sent out to them 
 in 1709, one Bovingh was a narrow-minded "orthodox" clergy- 
 man, a Dane to the backbone, possessing not the remotest 
 degree of sympathy with the German Pietists. As long as he 
 remained in Tranquebar he was a constant source of trouble to 
 the older missionaries ; and when in 171 1 he definitely quitted 
 the Tamil country — where he had never made himself at home — 
 he brought the most scandalous charges against them in a Diary 
 which he published in Denmark and in Germany. When we 
 remember that in addition to all these things Ziegenbalg was 
 frequently prostrated by sickness, and that in 171 1 Plutschau 
 returned to Germany, never again to revisit Tranquebar, we can 
 call it nothing but a miracle that, in spite of all these trials 
 and disappointments. Christian missions should ever have gained 
 a foothold in Tranquebar. The credit for this is in the main 
 due to the tireless industry and devoted labours of Ziegenbalg. 
 He was the real founder of the Danish Tamil Mission. 
 
 Besides the pastoral care which they bestowed on the de- 
 graded and savage German and Dutch mercenaries, Ziegenbalg 
 and his friends — for in 1709, in addition to Bovingh, who has 
 been already mentioned alDove, two other missionaries had come 
 out, Jordan who was not yet ordained, and the energetic and 
 able Grijndler — set themselves with the utmost diligence to the 
 task of instructing the half-castes and of preaching to the 
 natives as soon as they were able in the Tamil tongue. 
 Ziegenbalg especially, with his gift for languages and his tire- 
 less industry, obtained a complete mastery of Tamil. That 
 he took an interest in science and had a thorough grasp of 
 missionary problems was proved by the fact that he began 
 almost at once to read deeply both in Tamil literature and in 
 Tamil philosophy, and to produce writings with the double 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 107 
 
 object of facilitating the entrance of his colleagues and those 
 who should come after him into this new and strange world of 
 ideas, and of stimulating in wider circles at home interest and 
 sympathy in this ancient Indian civilisation and people. Un- 
 fortunately his friends at Halle cared very little for these 
 scientific pursuits, and Ziegenbalg's books and writings re- 
 mained largely unpublished. His most valuable treatise, The 
 Genealogy of the Deities of Malabar, first saw the light in 
 1867, when it was published by his biographer, Germann. 
 That even after the lapse of a century and a half the book was 
 not out of date was shown by the fact that the German edition 
 was almost immediately followed by one in English.^ As soon 
 as he had obtained a fair mastery of the language, Ziegenbalg 
 began to prepare works in Tamil. At first his progress was 
 painfully slow ; the only method of obtaining duplicate copies 
 was to have them copied out by hand. This was not only very 
 expensive but also a source of much anxiety, as the native 
 copyists took a delight in introducing mistakes into the most 
 important passages. In 1712 a small press with Roman type 
 was sent out, and in 1713 one with Tamil characters. Literary 
 work could now be conducted on more extended lines. 
 Ziegenbalg began by publishing a few sermons ; then came 
 the small Lutheran Catechism and several tracts and school- 
 books. But from the very beginning he attached chief im- 
 portance to a translation of the Holy Scriptures. With much 
 prayer he set about this work, which was laid very earnestly 
 upon his heart, and his unceasing diligence enabled him to 
 finish the whole of the New Testament and the Old as far as 
 the Book of Ruth. He neither spoke nor wrote a classical or 
 especially well-sounding Tamil ; his Roman Catholic con- 
 temporary and opponent, the eminent but deceitful Jesuit 
 linguist, Beschi, had an easy task in exposing translations of 
 this character to ridicule, calling it " horrid gibberish," and 
 declaring that "when one read the first line of it one's eyes 
 became inflamed, one's tongue dried up, and one's ears inclined 
 to burst : people looked at one another and broke out in loud 
 laughter.'''^ But for all that, Ziegenbalg's Tamil was intelligible 
 and faithful and was widely read, and it became the foundation 
 of the later classical translation of the Bible. 
 
 In addition to this literary work Ziegenbalg was diligent in 
 preaching the Word to the heathen. In front of the house he 
 had bought in the middle of the native portion of Tranquebar, 
 he built a pandal, or projecting roof of bamboo ; under this he 
 
 ^ See Appendix L. 
 
 "From the anti-Lutheran diatribe (in Tamil), "The Lutheran Swarm," Basle 
 Missionary Magazitie, 1868, p. 102. 
 
io8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 assembled thrice in the week, or oftener, a more or less numerous 
 company of most attentive listeners. Those who preferred to 
 speak with him privately in his study found him ever ready to help 
 them. In the second year of his residence at Tranquebar he 
 founded a school for the " Portuguese" and native children, and 
 combined it with a boarding-house, where he declared himself 
 ready to receive and maintain free of charge all children 
 entrusted to him, and to give them a Christian education. 
 Pretty soon a small congregation was collected, composed partly 
 of natives who had been baptized, partly of converts from the 
 Catholics. In 1707 the number of members was 35 ; in 
 1708, loi ; in 1712, 202; and by Ziegenbalg's death in 1719, 
 428 had been received or baptized, 280 of whom were 
 actually members at that time. The oversight of these 
 members caused Ziegenbalg considerable difficulty in many 
 ways. They were composed in almost equal proportions of 
 Tamils and of Portuguese-speaking half-castes, f It was one of 
 the peculiarities of this earliest missionary effort in India that 
 such a large amount of attention and care^ should have been 
 given to outcastes as well as natives. In the later development 
 of Protestant missions this particular form of work has been 
 frequently neglected. Then in the Tamil portion of the 
 congregation the missionaries were brought face to face with 
 the complicated question of caste. Part of these Tamil 
 Christians were Sudras of various castes, part Pariahs ; it was 
 soon found necessary to make concessions to the prejudices of 
 the former, by reserving a special place in the church for their 
 use. At the celebration of the Communion, Sudra women had 
 precedence over male Pariahs. This state of affairs came about 
 naturally and was in accordance with the usages introduced by 
 the Roman Catholics. In the meantime the missionaries were 
 able to alleviate the caste evil somewhat by adopting the 
 plan of teaching clever Pariah children Portuguese and 
 then clothing them in European dress. Such children hence- 
 forth took precedence of the Sudras. Mixed marriages between 
 such castes as were pretty closely related often occurred, but 
 never between Sudra and Pariah Christians.^ 
 
 The missionaries showed great skill and much spiritual 
 discernment in the way in which they introduced a system of 
 church government and a true Protestant form of worship, 
 thereby establishing a sound ecclesiastical polity. Church 
 discipline also was introduced, and its exercise was delegated to 
 a " mixed consistory." Their chief aim, moreover, was to secure 
 fellow-workers as soon as possible from amongst the Tamils 
 themselves. From the very beginning they had made use of 
 
 1 Bas/e Missionary Magazine, 1868, p. 133. 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 109 
 
 every Christian who showed any ability or willingness to help, 
 either as a schoolmaster or a catechist, or as a helper in some 
 other way. In 17 16 they opened an institution for the training 
 of teachers, beginning with eight students. They also founded 
 out-stations in the small Danish territory at such places as 
 Poriar and Tiliali, and at these missionaries were temporarily 
 stationed. 
 
 Seeing their work in Tranquebar hemmed in and hampered 
 on all sides, and finding that contributions were now beginning 
 to flow in more plenteously from Germany and England, the 
 missionaries commenced to entertain the project of extending 
 their mission beyond the boundaries of the little Danish state. 
 Ziegenbalg travelled to Madras (English) in the north, and 
 Negapatam (Dutch) in the south, and in both places he found 
 the authorities favourable and the natives ready to listen. In 
 his active mind there gradually developed the large plan 
 of journeying through the whole of the Tajnil country 
 from Madras in the north right down to Ceylon in the south, 
 preaching the gospel, and of uniting the universities of Germany, 
 Denmark, and Holland in an attempt to accomplish this great 
 work. 
 
 But before any extension of their work could be thought of, 
 it was necessary to put an end to the opposition, both open and 
 disguised, of Commander Hassius and the East India Company. 
 As the journey undertaken by Plutschau in 171 1 for this express 
 purpose had proved unsuccessful, Ziengenbalg himself left for 
 Europe in 17 14, and by his winning presence and his impetuous 
 and convincing eloquence brought about a complete change in 
 public opinion in so far as there existed any at all, on the 
 subject of foreign missions. Even before Ziegenbalg's arrival a 
 special Missionary Board, the Collegium de cursu evangelii 
 promovendo, had been established at Copenhagen in 17 14 under 
 a royal warrant, and in order to simplify the question of 
 administration Ziegenbalg was named its first " Provost." The 
 belligerent Hassius was recalled and his place filled by a 
 Governor, an ardent sympathiser with missionary work. Every- 
 thing promised well when, in August 18 17, Ziegenbalg, who in 
 the meantime had married the devout Maria Salzmann, landed 
 once more at Tranquebar. In place of the inadequate temporary 
 structure built in 1707, the large beautiful "Jerusalem Church," 
 still one of the chief adornments of Tranquebar, was erected 
 and consecrated in 17 18, while other churches were planned. 
 Suddenly there fell a ruinous blow upon the infant mission. 
 The chairmanship of the Board of Administration at Copenhagen 
 had passed into the hands of a man named Wendt ; he was of a 
 pious disposition, but of the narrowest possible outlook, and 
 
no HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 had allowed himself to become prejudiced against Ziegenbalg 
 by the unjust accusations of Bovingh. In his view the work 
 at Tranquebar was conducted on too worldly lines ; he was 
 possessed by what he imagined to be the apostolic missionary 
 ideal — a mission without church buildings, without schools, 
 without missionaries' dwellings, without anything outwardly 
 " institutional " ; the missionaries ought to be poor, to travel up 
 and down the Tamil country without any luggage whatever, 
 and do nothing but preach the gospel all day long to the 
 natives. It was Wendt's delight to press these entirely visionary 
 and immature missionary ideas upon the Tranquebar "Provost" 
 in so spiteful a fashion, and accompanied by so many personal 
 attacks and accusations, that Ziegenbalg and his colleagues 
 were deeply pained and wounded. \ This entirely mistaken and 
 ignorant policy cost the mission the lives of its two ablest 
 _representatives. Ziegenbalg set out in a document as dignified 
 as it was wise the utter impossibility of carrying out Wendt's 
 theories. He wrote it with his heart's blood ; on February 23rd, 
 
 17 19, he died, at the early age of thirty-six, his constitution, 
 which was always delicate, being unable to withstand this severe 
 blow. Four months later, in July 17 19, three fresh missionaries, 
 Schultze, Dal, and Kistenmacher, landed, and brought with them 
 a bulky communication from the Collegium. Griindler, 
 Ziegenbalg's most faithful friend and most competent colleague, 
 who opened it, was scarcely able to read it for tears : it was 
 a complete condemnation of Ziegenbalg and of the methods of 
 work hitherto adopted by the mission. Patiently submitting to 
 such senseless directions, Griindler prepared to set off on the 
 preaching tour insisted upon in the missive. But he was already 
 in the grip of disease, and within two weeks he had to be 
 brought back to Tranquebar, where he died on March 19th, 
 
 1720. "The real reason of his death," wrote his widow, " is the 
 grief which the severe letter from the College caused him. It is 
 that which has consumed his strength from day to day." The 
 news of these two fatalities had a most salutary effect at 
 home. Wendt fell into disfavour and was dismissed from his 
 post. His "apostolic" plans were for ever put on one side — 
 but unfortunately too late. 
 
 3. Further Development (1720-1798) 
 
 The young missionaries who landed in 17 19 were unable to 
 continue the work of the mission successfully. Benjamin 
 Schultze was perhaps the most talented amongst them — a man 
 of considerable linguistic gifts and great energy, but inconsistent 
 
THE DANISH MISSION in 
 
 and restless, without depth or dignity, and with a spice of the 
 petit maitre about him which rendered him unbearable to 
 his colleagues. He assumed the leadership at Tranquebar, 
 but Dal and Kistenmacher had a great deal to put up with, 
 and the latter died within a few months. Schultze regarded 
 it as his duty to root out the caste evil from amongst the 
 Tamil converts, and he issued various directions and prohibi- 
 tions on this point, greatly to the unsettling of the Christians. 
 But when he found he could not agree with Walther and 
 Pressier, two able missionaries who arrived in 1725, and who 
 remained till 1739 and 1738 respectively, he left Tranquebar 
 and sought a fresh field of labour in Madras. Walther and 
 Pressier soon brought the discord in the Christian congrega- 
 tions to a close. It may have been out of sheer contrast to 
 the exaggerated and ill-considered zeal of their predecessor 
 that they went farther in their toleration of caste than even 
 Ziegenbalg had done ; in fact, they were the first to hold 
 such toleration as a matter of principle. The Sudras were 
 now allowed to sit a yard apart from the Pariahs in church, 
 and even in the schools their children were kept apart, " as 
 far as this was possible." 
 
 The Church grew perceptibly during these decades ; often 
 in a single year there would be as many as 600 baptisms or 
 more. It was especially encouraging to find amongst the 
 converts capable and devoted men whom it was a real joy 
 to ordain, and thus lay the foundation of a native pastorate ; 
 thus in December 1733 Aaron was sent forth to preach, and 
 at Christmas 1741, Diego. But no Pariahs were ordained, not 
 even Rajanaiken, whom we must shortly mention. A decided 
 movement in favour of Christianity made itself felt during 
 this period in the kingdom of Tanjore — which surrounded the 
 tiny Tranquebar district on all sides. A sub-officer, Rajanaiken, 
 a Roman Catholic Tamil, whose interest in the Scriptures had 
 been awakened by reading Ziegenbalg's simple and straight- 
 forward translation of the New Testament, had made the 
 acquaintance of the Tranquebar missionaries, and had finally 
 thrown in his lot with them. He was not a man of great 
 gifts or intelligence, but he was all on fire to impart the truth 
 he had learned to others, and was ready to suffer much for 
 his faith. The leader of the Roman Catholic missions in the 
 kingdom of Tanjore at this time was Beschi, a Jesuit possessing 
 linguistic abilities of a high order and abundance of energy, 
 but who was both unscrupulous and ambitious ; his period of 
 service in India was from 1710 till about 1740, and one of his 
 great objects was to keep down Lutheran missions. As soon 
 as he heard of Rajanaiken's conversion he secretly commissioned 
 
112 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 several of the Roman Catholic village headmen to pull down 
 the homestead of the apostate, and nothing but the interven- 
 tion of heathen neighbours prevented the consummation of 
 this childish exploit. Three years later, however, in 1731, and 
 again at Beschi's orders, the fanatical Roman Catholics once 
 more attacked Rajanaiken's house ; two of his brothers were 
 wounded and his father killed. A few years later assassins 
 entered his house, and a native preacher who happened to be 
 staying with him only escaped with difficulty out of their hands. 
 Beschi not only set the fists and daggers of his pliable sub- 
 ordinates at work ; he sharpened his pen, keen enough already, 
 dipped it in the poison of hatred and malice, and composed 
 polemics of unmeasured bitterness against the Lutherans. The 
 cleverest and most famous is the " Lutheran Swarm," in which 
 the heathen are compared to the swarm of locusts mentioned 
 in the Apocalypse (Rev. ix. 1-4) in metaphorical language 
 that was most admirably suited to the Tamils with their love 
 of illustration.^ But neither his calumnies nor his attempted 
 violence could hinder the zeal and the joyful witness-bearing 
 of Rajanaiken, who had now left his military service and 
 become a " catechist " at Tranquebar. The fire kindled by his 
 preaching spread far and wide. 
 
 The missionaries at this time were still very greatly 
 hampered as regards their freedom of movement. It was not 
 until 1728 that Pressier was able to proceed to Tanjore, in 
 order to make the personal acquaintance of the converts whom 
 Rajanaiken had made. Apart from this visit, the catechists, 
 especially Aaron, an excellent native preacher ordained in 
 1733, had to exercise general supervision of the whole work. 
 Up to 1739, when Walther returned to Germany, the congrega- 
 tion at Tranquebar had increased to 299 " Portuguese " and 
 102 1 Tamils, and in the adjoining country districts of Tanjore 
 to 2446 souls, thus making a total of 3766 souls, a splendid 
 harvest after thirty years of patient sowing. 
 
 In the meantime the work of the mission had been extended 
 in other directions ; the two centres of the English colonial 
 power in South India, Madras and Cuddalore, or as they were 
 then called, P'ort St. George and Fort St. David, were the 
 places chosen for the planting of the two next stations. In 
 both Ziegenbalg himself had already attempted to make a 
 beginning and had met with a kind reception. As early as 
 the year 17 17 a German missionary had been stationed in 
 Cuddalore for a time; but it was not till 1737 that it was 
 raised to the rank of a regular station, and after that time it 
 
 ' For a longer summary of this document, cf. Basle Mtssioiiaty Magazine, 1868, 
 p. 102 et seq. 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 113 
 
 had during the eighteenth century an almost continuous line 
 of missionaries, as for instance Sartorius in 1737, Kiernander 
 in 1740, etc. In 1758 the station suffered severe calamities. 
 The French besieged, captured, and plundered the town. It 
 was on this occasion that the Swedish missionary Kiernander 
 left the Tamil country for good, and settled down in Bengal, 
 where we shall in due time meet with him again. The two 
 decades 1768-1788 brought Cuddalore good fortune; during 
 these years the gifted and faithful Gericke laboured, partly 
 here, partly in Negapatam, which was farther south. Yet 
 neither in the city itself nor in the wide-stretching country 
 beyond was the work rewarded with great success. Cuddalore 
 came more and more to be looked upon as an out-station of 
 Madras. 
 
 In Madras the work was begun, after several temporary 
 efforts of Ziegenbalg, by Benjamin Schultze (1726-1741). 
 He founded a school for Portuguese and another for Tamils, 
 and sought to teach the children in them both English and 
 the principles of Christianity. He collected funds for a church, 
 gathered a little band of disciples, 240 in number, won the 
 favour of the English by translating the Book of Common 
 Prayer into Tamil, and studied and wrote with great energy, 
 though without any permanent results. He deemed himself a 
 linguistic genius, and translated with much celerity large 
 portions of the Bible, not only into Tamil but also into 
 Telugu and Hindustani. But his linguistic work has since 
 proved practically worthless, and by its clumsy and ill-sounding 
 Tamil exposed the mission to the jeers of Beschi and the 
 criticism of the Tamils themselves. 
 
 When Schultze returned to Germany in 1741, Philipp 
 Fabricius took charge of the mission station at Madras, and 
 remained in charge of it for close on half a century (1742-1791). 
 He possessed a sensitive and retiring nature, and therefore 
 shrank from the wild, dissolute life of his time ; the Tamils 
 called him the " Sannyasi Aiyar," or the " monk-priest." He 
 was hardly the man for the unsettled days and difficult conflicts 
 through which he was destined to guide the fortunes of the 
 congregation at Madras. This dark period from 1745 to 1784 
 was taken up in the first place with the Anglo-French struggle 
 for the supremacy of South India, and later with the raids of 
 Haidar Ali of Mysore. When Madras was captured and 
 pillaged by the French in 1746, Fabricius was compelled to fly 
 with his frightened flock to the neighbouring Dutch colony of 
 Pulicat, and there to remain in exile until 1749. But he received 
 remarkable compensation for this long and enforced retreat. 
 The Portuguese Roman Catholics, one of whose chief centres in 
 
114 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 India was Mount Thomas, near Madras (or Milapur ; it had 
 been the seat of a Roman bishopric since 1606), and who were 
 therefore both numerous and influential in Madras, had played 
 so doubtful a role in the Anglo-French War, and had brought 
 upon themselves such strong suspicion of treason, that the East 
 India Company as a punishment banished them from all their 
 Indian possessions, and in particular forbade their further 
 residence in Madras. Their property in that city was con- 
 fiscated, and their church with the adjoining buildings, in the 
 Vepery suburb, was presented to Fabricius and the Lutherans. 
 In 1758 the French came again, and the light horse of their 
 Muhammadan allies sacked all the environs of Madras, and in 
 particular the mission property in the Vepery district. Fabri- 
 cius was for the second time compelled to flee with his converts 
 to Pulicat, and there to await the settlement of the political 
 situation. Fort St. George was closely invested, but an English 
 fleet came to the rescue in time, the French had to beat a 
 retreat, and Fabricius was able to return to his devastated home. 
 In 1780 mischief was threatened from a new quarter: the plain 
 before Madras was suddenly overrun by the wild mounted 
 hordes of Haidar Ali, who was acting in concert with the French ; 
 they advanced right up to the gates of the city, spreading fear 
 and desolation around them. Fabricius and his followers were 
 forced to take refuge in the fortress, and there they spent many 
 weary days. Such stormy times were little suited to advance 
 the peaceful work of the mission. 
 
 Fabricius, however, plunged all the more deeply into his 
 beloved Tamil studies, and attained a degree of proficiency in 
 the language which was not approached within even measurable 
 distance by any of his colleagues during the eighteenth century. 
 His favourite employment was the translation of the Bible into 
 Tamil. He quickly saw how unsatisfactory was the hurried 
 work of Schultze, and also how capable of amendment Ziegen- 
 balg's translations were ; he devoted his whole strength to this 
 task, and " crept through the original Bible text on his knees as 
 if he were himself a poor sinner and mendicant, carefully weigh- 
 ing each word to see how it might best be rendered." Fabricius' 
 translation ranks as one of the most splendid achievements in 
 this difficult field, and although since his time several other 
 translations of the Bible have been published in Tamil which 
 may perhaps be superior in fluency of rendering, intelligibility, 
 or classical purity of style, it is still doubtful whether any one 
 of these really comes up to the work of Fabricius, upon which, 
 moreover, all are more or less dependent. After the Bible, his 
 gentle spirit and fervent faith found expression in the composition 
 of Tamil hymns. Ziegenbalg had translated forty-eight into the 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 115 
 
 vernacular, and Schultze had added a large number of more 
 questionable value, but in this field also Fabricius holds the 
 place of pre-eminence. Without allowing himself much poetical 
 licence, he reproduced the very spirit of the German hymn- 
 writers in the simplest language possible. " More poetical 
 verses" — this is the judgment of the scholarly Gundert — "may 
 have been composed by missionaries as well as verses that were 
 perhaps more correct, but the fervent spiritual hymns of 
 Fabricius, welling up as they do from the deepest sources of 
 Christian experience, have never since been equalled by any 
 missionary poet. The only pity is that they are now almost 
 forgotten by the English and American Societies working in the 
 Tamil country, simply because these latter are not familiar with 
 the German tunes" {Basle Missionary Magazine, 1868, p. 189). 
 When after the capture of Pondicherry, the principal fortress of 
 the French, in 1761, Fabricius was presented by the English 
 with a printing press which they had found there, the quiet 
 and industrious missionary was able at once to proceed 
 with the publication of his carefully executed literary labours. 
 The chief of these were the different editions of his Old and 
 New Testaments; in 1774 there appeared his Tamil Hymn- 
 book, containing over 100 hymns; in 1778 his Tamil Grammar, 
 specially intended for the use of young missionaries; in 1779 
 the Tamil-English, and in 1786 the English-Tamil parts of 
 his Dictionary. 
 
 In the midst of these labours Fabricius did not by any 
 means neglect the seeds of the gospel which had been blown 
 far and wide by the storms of the war. Through his careful 
 pastoring there grew up out-stations all round Madras, at 
 Pulicat, Sadras, Chingleput, and Vellore. The native member- 
 ship, including these out-stations, increased during his fifty 
 years' labour from 240 to nearly 4000. But it must be admitted 
 that there is no evidence of any advance on the part of this 
 large congregation to spiritual or even to outward ecclesiastical 
 independence, or of the training of any trustworthy native 
 teachers or preachers. With an indiscretion which observation 
 shows to be not uncommon among men of a similarly intro- 
 spective nature, Fabricius had unfortunately for a long time 
 past been engaged in extensive money transactions.^ He lent 
 money at a high rate of interest, and received as security plots 
 of ground, villages, and even small estates. Since during the 
 unsettled times of the war, when all business came to a stand- 
 
 ^ It would be unjust to pass sentence upon the unwise financial operations of 
 Fabricius, and later of Kiernander, according to the standard of the regular monetary 
 transactions of the present day ; the great uncertainty of the money market at that 
 time, especially in India, explains much, without however excusing it. 
 
ii6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 still, Madras with its powerful English fortress seemed to offer 
 the best security for money, widows and orphans, mission 
 workers, and even the Administration of the mission, had placed 
 important sums of money in Fabricius' hands, and he had 
 invested them in the usual manner ; but he was basely misled 
 and deceived by a dishonest catechist, Gurupadam, in whom 
 he reposed a blind confidence. His principal debtor was a 
 Muhammadan, Baron Bommarasa, the son-in-law of the Nawab 
 of Arcot. This man became bankrupt, took to flight, and in 
 the end died, without paying anything he owed ; and the 
 Nawab refused to acknowledge the debts of his faithless and 
 spendthrift relative. For Fabricius this was a terrible disaster. 
 His debts became enormous ; a sum of more than 100,000 
 thalers was concerned, and that at a time when money was 
 particularly scarce. His colleagues, especially Schwartz, lost 
 almost all they had ; many widows and poor Christians were 
 deprived of everything down to their very last farthing. 
 Fabricius was sent to the debtors' prison again and again. The 
 last thirteen years of his life (1778-1791) were darkened by this 
 disaster. His boundless good-nature and credulity, the baseness 
 by which his " right hand," Gurupadam, exploited his weak 
 memory and his inability to judge prudently in money matters, 
 not only made his name a byword in the mouths of the English 
 and the heathen, but likewise brought severe scandal upon the 
 whole mission. Fabricius died, old and weary of life, on 
 January 23rd, 1791. 
 
 Fabricius' great contemporary, the brightest star in the con- 
 stellation of the Danish missionaries, was Christian Friedrich 
 Schwartz. Born on October 22nd, 1726, at Sonnenberg, in the 
 Neumark, he received instruction in the Tamil tongue even 
 before he left Halle from his fellow-countryman, Benjamin 
 Schultze, who had just returned from India. On July i6th, 
 1750, he landed at Cuddalore with two comrades, David Polzen- 
 hagen and Huttemann, and never again quitted South India to 
 the day of his death in 1798. Schwartz was by no means a 
 brilliantly gifted man ; even in his missionary labours he never 
 struck out any new lines of work. He did not bring the 
 Tranquebar Mission to a higher stage of development, he simply 
 extended its operations. But the younger Francke, who had 
 sent him out, was not mistaken in his man ; what distinguished 
 him was the peculiar " vivacity and the unmistakable purity " of 
 his nature. Whilst other missionaries in the course of years 
 suffered from the withering influence of the natural, and still 
 more mental and moral climate of their environment, every 
 fresh task seemed to fill Schwartz with yet greater " vivacity," 
 and to help him to some inward victory ; he grew perceptibly 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 117 
 
 along with his growing ideals, and at the same time the purity 
 of his heart, his insusceptibility to flattery, his incorruptibility 
 in money matters, his unassuming and simple faithfulness, the 
 frank straightforwardness of his relations with both the great 
 and the humble, were so self-evident that he enjoyed the 
 general confidence of the community as perhaps no other 
 missionary in India has ever done. 
 
 Let us describe Schwartz's appearance as it is set down for 
 us by an eye-witness : " Figure to yourself a short well-made 
 man, somewhat above the middle size, erect in carriage and 
 address, with a complexion rather dark though healthy, black 
 curled hair, and a manly engaging countenance expressive of 
 unaffected candour, ingenuousness, and benevolence, and you 
 will have an idea of what Mr. Schwartz appeared to be at first 
 sight. ... A dish of rice and vegetables dressed after the 
 manner of the natives was what he could always sit cheerfully 
 down to ; and a piece of dimity dyed black, and other materials 
 of the same homely sort, sufficed him for an annual supply of 
 clothing." 1 
 
 During the first decade (1750-1762) that Schwartz laboured at 
 Tranquebar he attracted practically no more attention than the 
 other missionaries. Several lengthy journeys to Madras, Ceylon, 
 Tanjore, and Trichinopoly widened his horizon and made him 
 familiar with the land and its people. At Trichinopoly he 
 obtained such a hold over the sorely neglected garrison that 
 the commander urged him to settle down there permanently. 
 After thorough consultation with his colleagues, he acceded to 
 this request, being convinced that the time had now come when 
 the gospel must be carried to the very heart of the Tamil country, 
 and that Trichinopoly would make a good centre for such an 
 enterprise. For sixteen years (i 762-1778) he laboured there, 
 being the founder of the mission station in that town. That 
 he at once set about proclaiming the Word of God to the heathen 
 and Muhammadans both in the crowded city and also in the 
 thickly populated surrounding districts, both in season and out 
 of season, that he faithfully gathered together and tended the 
 Christians who had been banished to Trichinopoly from Tanjore 
 and Tranquebar, and ever sought to increase their number by 
 fresh converts, that he prepared the latter for baptism by care- 
 ful daily teaching extending over a period of several months, 
 that he made an immediate beginning with educational work, 
 and for many months taught and catechised four hours a day, 
 scarcely needs to be mentioned. It was merely the daily round 
 of his laborious life. Trichinopoly was at that time the second 
 
 ^ C. F. Szvarlz, by H. Pearson, Dean of Salisbury ; cited from letter written by 
 W. Chambers. 
 
ii8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 capital of the Nawab of Arcot, who often resided there. In 
 order to be able to carry the gospel to this capricious Muham- 
 madan ruler and his court, Schwartz quickly learnt Hindustani, 
 and later, that he might appear a fully trained scholar in their 
 eyes, Persian. The Nawab was the ally of the English, and a 
 detachment of the latter occupied the fortress at Trichinopoly. 
 Amongst this English garrison Schwartz soon found one of 
 the main branches of his work, and in 1767 he was officially 
 transferred to the English by the authorities of the Danish 
 Mission, and made an English chaplain, with the proviso, how- 
 ever, that at any time he might return to full connection with the 
 mission. As army chaplain he accompanied the English troops 
 to Madura, when that town was besieged and captured, and in a 
 camp devastated by infectious diseases he proved himself a good 
 Samaritan indeed, until he himself was taken seriously ill. 
 When through a powder explosion in the Fort at Trichinopoly, 
 and through the heavy losses in the war with Madura, a number 
 of the children of European soldiers were left fatherless, he 
 founded in addition to his other work an orphan school, and as 
 there was a scarcity of teachers was compelled to devote to it 
 some of his own time. Thus work multiplied in his hands, and 
 none but a Schwartz could have accomplished it without becom- 
 ing exhausted both in body and soul — especially at Trichinopoly, 
 the red-hot "gridiron of India," 
 
 In the meantime the way was being opened for closer relations 
 with the royal house of Tanjore. About 1763 the learned, 
 kindly, but morally weak Maratha Rajah, Tulsi, debilitated 
 and unnerved by lifelong dissipation, came to the throne. As a 
 matter of fact Trichinopoly too was a part of his dominions ; 
 but the Nawab, who had robbed him of this fat morsel, would 
 only too gladly have taken with it the whole kingdom of Tan- 
 jore. As the English were his allies, he hoped to have the 
 benefit of their assistance in a raid he was organising in order to 
 carry out this project. Tulsi was too weak to oppose the 
 Nawab himself, and his relations with the English just at this 
 time were of a very strained nature. In this condition of affairs 
 he conceived a desire to attract to his court the universally 
 esteemed Schwartz, who possessed, moreover, the favour of the 
 English, in order to have one trustworthy man at his side 
 during all these complicated transactions. But the Brahman 
 advisers of the Rajah were far from desiring the presence at 
 court of one whose fidelity to Christianity was never known to 
 waver, and they were able to prevent the Rajah from entering 
 into any closer relationship. In the meantime, the Nawab had 
 carried out the threatened attack upon Tanjore (1773); the 
 capital was stormed, the Rajah taken prisoner, dethroned, and 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 119 
 
 cast into prison, where he languished for two years and a half. 
 But the Nawab was mistaken in his English confederates : they 
 did not view with favour any additions to his power, least of all 
 that of this rich kingdom ; they determined to reinstate the 
 Rajah, and the Nawab was forced to give way (1776). Schwartz 
 had the joy of announcing to the imprisoned and greatly 
 humiliated Rajah the news of his rehabilitation. The personal 
 friendship commenced during these days of sorrow led in 1778 
 to Schwartz changing his residence from Trichinopoly to 
 Tanjore, which thus became a station of the mission. It was 
 here he lived and worked during the last two decades of his life 
 (1 778-1 798). 
 
 Just as at an earlier period (1764) Schwartz had extended 
 his connections as far as Madura, so he now travelled down to 
 Tinnevelly, near the southern extremity of India (1778). In 
 the fortress ' of Falamcottah, near Tinnevelly, was a little 
 English garrison, and amongst the Tamil soldiers who formed 
 part of it were fifty or sixty Christians who had been members 
 of the congregations at Trichinopoly and Tanjore. Schwartz 
 preached to the English and to the Tamil converts, and sought 
 to establish amongst them a native Church. On this occasion 
 too he baptized a Brahman widow, Clarinda, who had already 
 been a candidate for baptism in Trichinopoly, but whom 
 Schwartz had to refuse on account of her dubious relations with 
 an English officer. Thenceforward she became the life and 
 soul of the Christian propaganda in Tinnevelly. Schwartz 
 thought this province a most promising one, and never allowed 
 the relations established on this journey to be interrupted. We 
 shall come across the results of his visit later, when we deal 
 with the missionary history of this district. 
 
 In the following year (1779) the English themselves made 
 use of Schwartz as a political agent. At this time the danger 
 threatened by the Maratha rebel, Haidar AH, the usurper of 
 Mysore, was at its most critical stage. The English, who 
 well knew that this artful prince had entered into a compact 
 with their enemy the French, and that therefore a collision 
 with him would be inevitable, desired to delay the issue, because 
 they did not yet feel themselves strong enough for it. They 
 dispatched an embassy, therefore, to his court at Seringapatam, 
 and in order to give it an appearance of credibility induced the 
 missionary, who did not see through their tactics, and who 
 hoped to be able to establish peace, to accompany this embassy. 
 The negotiations were fruitless. Haidar Ali appears to have 
 got to know the plans of the English. Both on the journey 
 and in Seringapatam Schwartz employed every spare moment 
 in the proclamation of the gospel and in spiritual ministrations 
 
120 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 to the neglected Europeans, Hardly had he got back to 
 Tanjore, when Haidar AH's hordes of light horsemen poured 
 across the defenceless Tamil lowlands, burning and devastating 
 the whole country ; they swept right up to the gates of Madras 
 and were within a hair's breadth of capturing that fortress 
 by surprise. The Cauvery forts that fell into their power, 
 especially the towns of Trichinopoly and Tanjore, were not 
 prepared for a siege and were insufficiently provisioned. The 
 peasants of the rich surrounding districts, who had been so often 
 previously deceived by both parties, would give up their stores 
 of rice neither at the orders of the Brahmans nor yet those of 
 the English officers. Schwartz had to intervene ; he pledged 
 his own name as a guarantee for the actual payment, and the 
 stores at once began to flow in. Foreseeing the evil days, 
 Schwartz had also bought large quantities of rice out of his own 
 private means, and was thereby able, as soon as the trouble came, 
 to feed hundreds. It was no wonder that numbers of them 
 indicated their desire to be received into the Christian Church. 
 When in 1782 the old lion, Haidar AH, died and things began 
 to go less successfully with his son Tipu Sahib, so that he 
 seemed to be willing to treat for a cessation of hostilities, 
 Schwartz was again chosen to accompany the embassy of peace. 
 But he was only allowed to go as far as Satyamangalam, 
 Tipu Sahib forbidding him to proceed farther. This time, 
 however, peace was actually brought about at Mangalore 
 (1784). 
 
 In the years that followed Tulsi so mismanaged and 
 impoverished his land that the English interfered and appointed 
 an Advisory Council. So great was their confidence in 
 Schwartz that they added his name as honorary member of 
 the Council to those of the three lay members ; he had equal 
 powers with them, and frequently gave the casting vote on 
 whatever business they had in hand. 
 
 In 1787 Rajah Tulsi lay on his death-bed. At the last 
 moment he had adopted as heir his ten-year-old nephew, 
 Serfoji. He would have liked to appoint Schwartz guardian 
 and in consequence Regent of the land during his heir's 
 minority ; but Schwartz persuaded him to entrust both offices 
 to his brother, Amir Singh. This latter was recognised, there- 
 fore, as Regent by the people of the country and by the 
 English. But his misgovernment was so scandalous, and his 
 designs upon the throne and life of the young prince entrusted 
 to his care so obvious, that eventually the English deprived him 
 of the government and the administration of justice, and con- 
 ferred both offices upon Schwartz ; he was appointed as English 
 " Resident " for two years, and extensive powers were entrusted 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 121 
 
 to him. In such a position he had necessarily to devote a 
 large part of his time and strength to the reorganisation of the 
 ruined finances of the country and to administering its laws. 
 His modest house and garden were beset early and late by a 
 crowd of rich and poor seeking his counsel or his help. It was 
 a magnificent feature of the work of this unpretentious man 
 that in spite of his lofty and influential position and in spite of 
 all the thronging cares of state, he yet found time to teach in 
 the day school and to prepare catechumens for baptism. He 
 entrusted the education of young Serfoji to his faithful and 
 gifted colleague Gericke at Madras, until he was set upon the 
 throne by the English in 1796. The young prince, accessible 
 as he was to Christian influences, regarded Schwartz as the 
 saviour of his life and his father. 
 
 With Schwartz taking up such an influential position in 
 Tanjore, it was not to be wondered at that the work founded half 
 a century before by Rajanaiken and his followers made rapid 
 headway. Schwartz specially exerted himself to obtain an 
 entry into the Kalian villages lying south and south-east of 
 Tanjore. The Kalians are one of the most peculiar of the 
 thief and robber castes of Southern India ; they practise theft 
 both as a caste duty and as a profession, and are an ill-reputed 
 and violent race. A part of this caste, consisting of the inhabit- 
 ants of several districts, was won over by Schwartz to Christianity, 
 and even though the old evil practices were not easily given up, 
 and though these Kalian congregations have given later 
 missionaries a lot of trouble, yet even to-day they still remain 
 part and parcel of the Tanjore Church. At Schwartz's 
 death this latter numbered 2800 souls. What a far-seeing 
 and energetic man Schwartz was may also be seen by 
 his work in another direction. John Sullivan, the English 
 Resident at Tanjore, conceived the sagacious idea of founding 
 in the principal centres of the Tamil country high schools for 
 native children, with obligatory instruction in English, with 
 a view to introducing the English language and English ideas 
 into India. But Sullivan was wise enough to see that, as things 
 then were, he could only hope for success with his scheme if the 
 missionaries took over the direction of these so-called provincial 
 schools. Without a moment's hesitation Schwartz promised 
 the necessary help, since unreserved permission was given him 
 to teach Christianity in those schools. Thus English schools 
 were inaugurated at Tanjore, Trichinopoly, and Ramnad — the 
 first attempt, though unfortunately one destined to early failure, 
 to establish a Western school system. 
 
 During the last years of his life Schwartz saw with great 
 pain the decline of interest in Germany in foreign missionary 
 
122 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 work. It was a comfort to him to leave his Trichinopoly work 
 in the hands of the faithful Pohle. For his beloved work at 
 Tanjore he himself provided a successor in his foster-son, 
 Kaspar Kohlhoff the younger. Schwartz never married, and 
 when on one occasion a Danish naval chaplain recklessly sent 
 him out a wife, who moreover had behaved most scandalously 
 during the long sea-voyage, he unceremoniously refused her 
 and sent her back. On the other hand, he loved young 
 Kohlhoff as his own child, and it was an unspeakable joy to 
 Schwartz to ordain him on the occasion of the jubilee of the 
 ministry of the elder Kohlhoff (1787). "What I felt on this, 
 the most affecting day of my life," he said, " it is impossible for 
 me to describe." For over fifty years (1787- 1844) young 
 Kohlhoff continued his work in Tanjore. In the beginning of 
 the nineties Schwartz came to feel more and more the troubles 
 and trials of old age, and at the end of 1796 a severe sickness 
 laid him aside, from which, to the amazement of all, he recovered. 
 But in February 1798 death came upon him suddenly; his 
 last days were truly devoted and peaceful. Mentally vigorous 
 right up to the end, surrounded by faithful colleagues, loved 
 and cherished like a father by his Tamil helpers, he was able 
 even on his death-bed to give utterance to many wise and 
 spiritual counsels, which were for long treasured up in faithful 
 hearts. 
 
 Schwartz's unique position in Tanjore had also enabled 
 him to procure most advantageous sites for his churches. 
 One of the places of worship erected by him is very close to a 
 pool of especial sanctity, and lies within the precincts of the 
 Fort ; the other, and with it the whole of the station as he 
 afterwards developed it, is situated in a suburb where the 
 grateful generosity of the prince had assigned a large plot of 
 ground for the foundatioh of two little Christian villages. 
 With his few needs we can scarcely wonder that Schwartz 
 should have left a large amount of money, between ^9000 and 
 ;6^ 1 0,000 sterling, especially when we remember that in the 
 last decades of his life he had received a very high salary, and 
 was moreover frequently presented with handsome gifts. He 
 bequeathed it all to the native Church, especially in the form of 
 endowments for the poor, and for schools. 
 
 Unspeakably more important for the mission and for the 
 native Christians than the money he left behind, was the good 
 name of the " Royal Priest of Tanjore," which clung to him 
 long after his death, and which even to-day pervades the Tamil 
 Mission like a gracious perfume. In recognition of his valuable 
 political services the East India Company erected a marble 
 monument to his memory in one of the churches of Madras. Far 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 123 
 
 more touching and attractive, however, is the other monument 
 which was set up by the grateful Serfoji in the garrison 
 church at Tanjore, upon which was placed the often cited 
 English inscription : — 
 
 " Firm wast thou, humble and wise, 
 Honest, pure, free from all disguise, 
 Father of orphans, the widow's support. 
 Comfort in sorrow of every sort. 
 To the benighted, dispenser of light. 
 Doing and pointing to that which is right ; 
 Blessing to princes, to people, to me ; 
 May I, my father, be worthy of thee ! 
 Wisheth and prayeth thy Saraboji ! " 
 
 After the death of Pressier in 1738 and the return to 
 Europe of Walther in 1739, the work at Tranquebar had 
 passed through a period of settled calm — though faithful and 
 active missionaries had by no means been lacking, as the 
 names of Wiedebrock and John (who died in 181 3) testify. 
 The staff was further notably reinforced by the addition of 
 missionary doctors, such as Martini (d. 1791) and his successor, 
 the younger Klein. But none of these men stood up 
 prominently above his colleagues, nor earned for himself 
 special distinction. The church membership, too, for a consider- 
 able number of years increased regularly. But for the most 
 part the work of the missionaries was confined to the town, 
 and they left to their younger brethren the instruction of the 
 candidates for baptism, who at certain periods of the year 
 streamed into Tranquebar, and to the native preachers and 
 catechists the preaching up and down in the country and the 
 oversight of the widely separated country stations. A further 
 advance was made by the erection of the stately and massive 
 "Bethlehem" church in the town of Poriar in 1746: this 
 church was worked, however, by the Tranquebar pastorate. 
 The work now seemed to centre itself more and more in 
 educational activity, and John, who was specially gifted in this 
 direction, soon became a zealous advocate of this policy. 
 Partly, it must be admitted, to help on his finances, he established 
 a large school at Tranquebar for the children of Europeans 
 and wealthy natives. The school and " pension " must have 
 been wisely directed. But of direct help to missions through 
 its agency there was none ; for none of the pupils entered into 
 the missionary service, still less were any catechists or native 
 preachers recruited from amongst them. For the new^ly 
 arrived missionaries it was far more comfortable to give 
 instruction in this magnificent school, and to be well paid for it, 
 than to toil at the difficult Tamil language, or to travel up and 
 
124 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 down in the country districts. The older missionaries also, 
 such as John and Rottler, found their time fully taken up by 
 the institution : John's Tranquebar Institution was the fore- 
 runner of Marshman's at Serampore; but the founder and 
 director of the latter received no salary, and besides his educa- 
 tional work he rendered, along with his excellent wife, the 
 greatest services to the cause of missions, while the same 
 cannot be said of the work of John. 
 
 Unfortunately the mission work carried on for forty 
 years in Tranquebar by the Moravian Brethren forms only 
 an episode in the history of the Danish Mission. The 
 Missionary Board of the Moravians in 1739 received a re- 
 quest from Denmark to evangelise and colonise the small 
 and scattered islands of the Nicobar group, situated in the 
 eastern portion of the Bay of Bengal ; the Tranquebar mission- 
 aries had themselves made an attempt in this direction, but it 
 had failed owing to the early death of their representative, the 
 godly David Polzenhagen. The Brotherhood accepted the 
 very unpromising offer on being presented with important 
 privileges in all the Danish possessions in the East Indies, and 
 especially the right to found a strong missionary centre in 
 Tranquebar (where they were to enjoy perfect religious 
 freedom), as a base for the work in the remote Nicobar Islands. 
 In 1760 a company of fourteen Brethren landed at Tranquebar, 
 and their number was increased in the following year. They 
 bought a garden plot, the Garden of the Brethren, situated 
 near the town, and proceeded to settle there. The Lutheran 
 missionaries gave them a most unfriendly reception, and with 
 the utmost pettiness of spirit and the most unworthy misre- 
 presentations and calumnies they succeeded in bringing it 
 about that at length the Brethren were forbidden to exercise 
 their missionary calling in public, and were confined within the 
 four walls of their "Garden." For twenty years (1768-1788) 
 the projected Nicobar Mission passed from one stage of distress 
 and disappointment to another. The climate proved to be 
 positively deadly ; the population, which was split up into 
 numberless little tribes each speaking widely different Malayan 
 dialects, belonged to the very lowest stage of civilisation, and 
 did not show itself responsive to Christian influences. Com- 
 munication with the outside world was so rare and so unsafe 
 that the missionaries had to depend for their support entirely 
 on the work of their own labour, which in such a climate was 
 an impossibility. After eleven of the twenty-four Brethren 
 sent out had died at Nancowry, their station on the Nicobar 
 Islands, and the thirteen remaining had died soon after their 
 return to the " Garden of the Brethren " at Tranquebar, the 
 
THE DANISH M,ISSION 125 
 
 hopeless post was given up (1788). At Tranquebar the 
 Brethren who were still sent out in large numbers confined 
 themselves with praiseworthy meekness to their own quarters, 
 in order to avoid any collision with the Lutherans, who 
 however stood in urgent need of their help, both on account of 
 their own paucity of men and also on account of the doors 
 that were being opened up to them in every direction, especially 
 in Tinnevelly and Madura. But they would sooner have seen 
 their work run aground than summon the " brethren who were 
 in the other ship" to their aid. After the Herrnhuters had 
 patiently withstood continuous ill-fortune and disappointment 
 for over forty-three years, the " Garden of the Brethren " was 
 at length closed in 1803. No less than seventy Brethren had 
 been sent out in the first twenty-five years, more than three 
 times as many missionaries as had come out during the same 
 period in connection with the Danish Mission, and all this 
 splendid missionary force was crushed out of existence through 
 pure denominational jealousy. The sole success the Brethren 
 won was that " through the practical demonstration of 
 Christianity which they gave in their life and conduct, the 
 attention of many was drawn to the essential principles of the 
 Christian religion." 
 
 Just as the mission itself had undergone great changes, 
 consequent on its extension to Madras and Cuddalore in 
 the north, and to Trichinopoly and Tanjore in the west, so 
 had the external circumstances of the Danish missionaries 
 been subject to great alteration. The first of their number 
 had been sent out as " royal Danish missionaries," and had 
 received their stipends from the treasury of the Missionary 
 College, whose funds were made up, partly of private subscrip- 
 tions from the King and other members of the Royal Family, 
 and partly of contributions from the royal treasuries of Denmark 
 and Norway. It is obvious that since the funds of the Mission 
 were of this semi-official nature they could only be used in the 
 interests of actual Danish possessions, i.e. on behalf of the 
 evangelisation of the little Danish colony of Tranquebar. All 
 the other principal stations lay outside Danish territory. Now 
 in 1709 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge 
 (S.P.C.K., founded 1698), stimulated by the words of the 
 Lutheran court preacher in London, Bohme, had begun to 
 support the Danish Mission, though at first only with in- 
 dividual and irregular gifts. In 1728, on being approached 
 by the missionary B. Schultze, this Society determined to 
 adopt Madras as its special mission field and Schultze as its 
 first Indian missionary; in 1730 it invited from Germany the 
 excellent Sartorius to enter its service. It thus took its stand 
 
126 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 alongside the Danish Missionary College as a more or less 
 independent Missionary Board, without however any attempt 
 being made to carefully define the rights of either. For as a 
 matter of fact all that either Missionary College or Missionary 
 Society had to do was to pay the missionaries' salaries. The 
 Francke Institutions selected the missionaries, and the Franckes, 
 both father and son, saw to it most jealously that only Germans, 
 and students and friends of their own establishment, were 
 employed. Fenger, a Dane, testifies (according to one of Dai's 
 letters): "All the affairs of the mission are transacted in German; 
 it is the language used in the Conferences, in the Collegiis 
 biblicis, and in the prayer-meetings ; letters to other missionaries, 
 to England, to Denmark, to one's superiors even, are written in 
 German, and German letters are received in return " (Fenger, 
 History, p. 163). It was only to be expected that, in view of 
 this German character of the work, the Lutheran pietism of 
 Halle should wholly dominate the mission in India. A few 
 missionaries such as Schwartz, though even he had his scruples, 
 were broad-minded enough to use the Book of Common Prayer 
 for the English who attended their services. But when Geister, 
 a weak and unreliable fellow, sought to introduce the English 
 Catechism into the mission schools at Madras, even the mild 
 Fabricius lost his temper, and went so far as to break off all 
 intercourse with his self-willed colleague ; and Francke the 
 younger wrote on this occasion : " Rather let everything decay 
 and fall to pieces than agree with any such proceeding. If the 
 English Society in Madras will not reverse the decision, the 
 Danish missionaries must retire to Tranquebar, and we shall 
 withdraw all supplies." " The Mission at Madras was com- 
 menced as an evangelical Lutheran Mission . . . and it must 
 never be regarded in any other light than as an evangelical 
 Lutheran Mission." Apart from this the missionaries were 
 practically untroubled by restrictions from the home authorities. 
 Rev. A. Westcott, a High Churchman who would naturally 
 have stood up for all the rights of his own Church with regard 
 to this mission — which afterwards passed into the hands of the 
 Anglicans — writes (in Our Oldest Indian Mission, p. 19): "The 
 missionaries themselves used to confirm and meet together for 
 ordinations. The catechists used to baptize. Each congregation 
 was independent and ruled by its own missionary, although the 
 missionaries would occasionally meet, as it were, in Synod, and 
 were in the habit of accepting guidance of any more prominent 
 men, as, for example, of Schwartz, whom his brother-missionaries 
 always regarded as their spiritual father and created into a 
 quasi-bishop. Each missionary in local affairs was assisted by 
 his catechists, who, under his presidency, formed a sort of 
 
THE DANISH MISSION 127 
 
 disciplinary council, the decisions of which in various matters 
 brought before them were usually confirmed by the civil power. 
 The missionary was in fact regarded as the head of a community, 
 on the same principle as native headmen were recognised, and 
 was permitted to fine, flog, and otherwise punish offenders 
 belonging to his community." There was thus a most peculiar 
 and complicated condition of things — three governing bodies 
 working side by side, but whose respective rights were as yet 
 wholly undefined, and each of which had under its auspices 
 missionaries and native churches practically independent. It is 
 no wonder that when in the nineteenth century the rights of 
 missions and missionary societies were placed on a very much 
 firmer basis, and when the governing bodies of the different 
 societies, which had hitherto worked happily together, took up 
 a position of complete separation, unedifying friction often 
 occurred. 
 
 We are unable to state the exact number of members 
 composing the various native churches under the direction of the 
 mission at the close of the eighteenth century, i.e. about the 
 time of Schwartz's death. According to calculations made by 
 Chaplain Hough at Palamcottah, which were based on the 
 Lutheran Church records, the total number of converts baptized 
 prior to 1806 was — 
 
 In Tranquebar, together with country congregations and including 
 
 Tanjore up to 1778 
 In Tanjore, 1778-1806 {i.e. after Schwartz's advent there) 
 In Trichinopoly, from 1762 ( ,, ,, 
 
 In Madras, from 1727 
 In Cuddalore, from 1737 
 In Tinnevelly, from 1778 
 
 We are justified in concluding that not more than half of 
 these would have been removed by death or other causes ; we 
 may therefore count the entire number of adherents of the 
 Danish Mission about the year 1800 at from 18,000 to 20,000 
 souls.^ 
 
 Fifty-seven Danish missionaries went out to India between 
 1706 and 1846; 20 died and were buried in Tranquebar, and 
 22 at other stations in the Tamil country; only 15 returned to 
 their fatherland. 
 
 ^ Hough, History of Christianity in India, vol. iii. 
 
 
 20,014 
 
 lere) .' 
 
 3,000 
 
 ) 
 
 2,463 
 4,851 
 2,104 
 4,538 
 
 Sum total 
 
 36,970 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 
 DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 I. The Age of William Carey (1792-1833) 
 
 (a) Tlie Daivn of Modern Missions in India 
 
 Just as the Danish Mission, with the one exception of the Httle 
 Danish settlement of Tranquebar, had substantially identified 
 itself with the English colonies in South India, halting 
 where they halted and advancing where they advanced, so 
 modern missionary work in India has as its background and 
 setting the Anglo-Indian Empire ; it is intimately connected 
 with the beginnings of that empire, and has extended along 
 with it from one end of the country to the other. This fact 
 must be borne in mind when seeking rightly to estimate the 
 importance of English colonisation for Indian missions. No 
 thanks, however, is due in the matter to the East India Com- 
 pany, the founder of this magnificent empire. That Company 
 gave no helping hand to missionary work ; it performed the 
 services of herald and forerunner to which Providence had 
 called it in an unwilling and reluctant manner, and every foot 
 of broad land which the cause of missions gained had to be 
 wrung from it by main force. 
 
 For one and a half centuries, from its founding in 1600 up to 
 the battle of Plassey in 1757, the East India Company had been 
 simply a commercial undertaking, and had contented itself with 
 dotting all round the coast trading-ports and factories which 
 were hardly as important as those European settlements that 
 we find to-day in the Treaty Ports of China. Moreover, it was 
 animated by the true small tradesman's policy of seeking on 
 the one hand its own enrichment, and on the other of driving 
 from the field or attempting to cripple — and that often by 
 unfair means — rivals who poured into the country from every 
 quarter. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Danes, and Portuguese. The 
 policy of blow upon blow and stroke upon stroke inaugurated 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 129 
 
 by those strenuously active leaders and Governors, Clive and 
 Warren Hastings — which led in South India to the pro- 
 longed and dire struggle with France already alluded to — shook 
 the province of Bengal into the hands of the Company as ripe 
 fruit is shaken from the tree. The possession of this province, 
 which in extent, population, and the inexhaustible fertility of its 
 soil far surpassed the mother country, was all the more valuable 
 because there lay on the farther side of it, helpless and crouching 
 at the feet of the conquerors, the empire of the Great Moghuls, 
 Hindustan, with its untold wealth and its vast territories 
 stretching away into what was then well-nigh unrealisable 
 distance. 
 
 Up to this time the Company had not taken the slightest 
 interest in the spiritual welfare of the Hindus. It is true that 
 in the Charter of 1698 there was a clause: "The chaplains in 
 the factories are to study the vernacular language, the better to 
 enable them to instruct the Gentoos that shall be the servants or 
 slaves of the same Company, or of their agents, in the Protestant 
 religion;" but in the general scramble for riches the clause had 
 remained a dead letter. However, in the very next year after 
 Plassey, 1758, Protestant missions were commenced in Bengal. 
 A Swede, Rev. John Kiernander, who had been sent out-to 
 South India by the Danish Missionary Board, found himself 
 homeless in consequence of the pillaging of the town and mission 
 station of Cuddalore by the French in 1757 ; and, as the entire 
 south was re-echoing with strife and the shock of battle, he 
 turned his steps towards Bengal. The time was ripe for his 
 coming. A few clergymen had, it is true, been sent out from 
 time to time to the English in North India; but some of them 
 received such infinitesimal salaries that they were obliged to 
 eke out a livelihood by engaging in business, others had not 
 sufficient spiritual and moral grit to keep themselves unspotted 
 from the world in the dissolute atmosphere of Anglo-Indian 
 society, whilst yet others were already bringing over from England 
 the colourless and unsatisfying Deism of their time. In a word, 
 they were not " salt," they gave forth no " savour." Besides all 
 this, the last two of these clergymen had just perished in the 
 frightful tragedy of the Black Hole, 1756, and for the moment 
 there was not one clergyman left in Calcutta. So Kiernander 
 was gladly welcomed. Without hesitation, Clive allowed him 
 a free hand in the discharge of his missionary duties. He 
 soon created for himself a sphere of influence such as he had 
 had amongst the Tamils ; he preached to the English and 
 administered to them the sacraments ; and he gathered together 
 a congregation of " Portuguese." (This was the name commonly 
 bestowed at that time upon the offspring of European fathers 
 9 
 
130 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and native mothers. It was applied in the first place to that 
 older and fairly numerous generation now called the Goanese, 
 who, dating from the days of Portuguese colonial supremacy, 
 adhere even in our own time almost entirely to the Roman 
 Catholic Church, and have well-nigh sunk to the level of an 
 Indian mixed caste ; it was likewise applied to the newer and 
 rapidly increasing generation of English descent who have since 
 the middle of the last century conformed for the most part to 
 the Protestant Church— the present-day Eurasians.) Eor these 
 different classes of people Kiernander built schools, and at great 
 personal sacrifice and at a cost of £8000 sterling (for he had 
 married a lady of wealth) he built the great, so-called " Old 
 Church," which in the hands of the C.M.S. is still in active use, 
 and which for thirty years was the only Christian church in 
 Bengal. He called it " Beth Tephillah," the " House of Prayer." 
 A young German missionary, Rev. J, C. Diemer, was sent to 
 his assistance, but does not appear to have remained long. 
 Kiernander himself stayed at his post for twenty-eight years 
 (1758-1786), and his work was much blessed. At his death 
 there was a congregation of 301 members, of whom half were 
 English, and almost all the rest " Portuguese. " As helpers in 
 his "Portuguese" work he had the learned Jose da Costa, a 
 former Dominican monk, who had been brought to the light by 
 Fabricius in Madras, and the Padre Bento, likewise a converted 
 Roman Catholic. It is scarcely right to say that Kiernander took 
 part in actual mission work ; he could speak neither Bengali nor 
 Hindustani with any degree of ease ; a few Christian tracts are 
 asserted to have been translated into the vernacular either by 
 him or w^ith his help ; he is also said to have baptized eight 
 Muhammadans and ten Hindus. The only Christian Hindu of 
 note at the arrival of the Baptist missionaries was Ganesa 
 Das of Delhi, Persian interpreter and translator at the Supreme 
 Court of Calcutta, who had been baptized by Kiernander in 
 1774. When Carey arrived at Calcutta, seven years after 
 Kiernander's death, he was hardly able to discover a single 
 vestige of his missionary activity. Furthermore, Kiernander's 
 last days were full of gloom. He was quite blind. Through 
 his own unbounded generosity and the folly of his son, he 
 became a bankrupt and was thrown into the debtors' prison. 
 His church came under the hammer, and was only saved thanks 
 to the intervention of the noble Charles Grant. A successful 
 operation once more gave Kiernander the use of his eyes. 
 Freed from jail, he hastened to the Dutch colony of Chinsurah, 
 where he wished to be appointed chaplain. There he died ; 
 his Calcutta work came to an end, because no one was 
 sufficiently interested in it to carry it on. Thus Kiernander was 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 131 
 
 not a pioneer of Indian missions, and it should be remembered 
 that the Government placed no obstacles in his way. 
 
 Contemporaneously with Kiernander, Moravian Brethren 
 worked for a space of fifteen years (i 777-1 792) in Ser^mpore (then 
 belonging to Denmark and called Frederiksnagar) ; they also 
 endeavoured to obtain a foothold in Calcutta and Patna. They 
 learnt Bengali, compiled a Dictionary, and translated a number 
 of books and Scriptures into the vernacular. But as no success 
 whatever crowned their efforts, they lost heart and retired to 
 Tranquebar in 1791, i.e. just before Carey's arrival. Scarcely 
 a trace of their work appears to be extant either in Serampore 
 or Calcutta. 
 
 Modern missionary work in India dates from November i ith, 
 1793, the day upon which William Carey ^ landed in Calcutta. 
 Its first two decades were gloomy enough. The Company which 
 on many occasions had supported missionary labour in the 
 south of India and had always maintained a friendly attitude 
 towards them, which had moreover allowed Kiernander to work 
 undisturbed in Calcutta for a quarter of a century, had in the 
 meantime changed its religious policy, and now adopted, 
 definitely and resolutely, an inimical attitude towards missionary 
 work. No preaching of the gospel was to be permitted in the 
 Company's territories. When Rev. John Chamberlain, a Baptist 
 missionary, was expelled from Hindustan on account of some 
 harmless preaching at a great Indian Diela at Hardwar, and 
 complained about it to an otherwise well-intentioned Governor- 
 General, the Marquess of Hastings, the latter coolly replied, 
 " One might fire a pistol into a magazine and it might not 
 explode, but no wise man would hazard the experiment." The 
 opinion was general, " even amongst many of the most enlightened 
 British officials in the country, that there could be no more 
 dangerous means of estranging the hearts of the people from the 
 Government, and no surer way of endangering the stability of 
 the English rule, than by attempting to meddle with the 
 religious concerns of the Hindus, however prudently and 
 carefully one might set to work. All were convinced that 
 rebellion, civil war, and universal unrest would certainly accom- 
 pany every attempt to promote missionary enterprise, and, above 
 all, that the conversion of a high-caste native soldier would 
 inevitably mean the disbanding of the army and the overthrow 
 of British rule in India." Thus did the English chaplain Fisher 
 
 ' William Carey was born on August 17th, 1 761, in the village of Paulerspurj', in 
 Northampton. lie was the son of a poor country schoolmaster, and in his youth was 
 a cobbler. In 1783 he joined the Baptists, and after overcoming unspeakable diffi- 
 culties, he became the founder of the B.M.S. in October 1792, at Kettering. His 
 manifold activities in arousing a missionary spirit in England and Scotland before his 
 departure for India do not come within the scope of this work. 
 
132 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 succinctly describe the general feeling in India on his arrival 
 there in 1812. 
 
 As a matter of fact, every attempt on the part of the 
 soldiers to embrace Christianity was suppressed in the Ben- 
 gal army, though not in the armies of Madras and Bombay, 
 which still remained independent. When in 18 19 a Brahman 
 of high rank, an orderly sergeant who had been decorated for 
 bravery, Naick (Corporal) Prabhu Din by name, was baptized 
 at Meerut, he was driven out of the army. In 1830, as the 
 Government chaplain at Allahabad, Craufurd, was preparing 
 to baptize some soldiers who had been converted through his 
 teaching, this was not only forbidden in the strongest terms 
 from Calcutta, but at the same time an order was issued to all 
 the chaplains, forbidding them to speak to the Sepoys about 
 religion under any circumstances whatsoever.^ 
 
 Further, the English officials had, almost without excep- 
 tion, abandoned the principles of Christian morality. Even a 
 Governor-General like Warren Hastings and his inconvenient 
 rival, Philip Francis, were not ashamed to live in open adultery. 
 Their sole connection with the Church was that once a year, 
 at Christmas or at Easter, they attended divine service in 
 great state. Then the natives, open-mouthed, assembled in 
 droves to witness the extraordinary spectacle of Englishmen 
 " doing puja " — worshipping, as they themselves were wont to 
 do in presence of their idols. Over-zealous Orientalists, more- 
 over, sang the praises of the religions of the East, especially 
 of the then newly discovered Indian religions and systems of 
 philosophy, and even if every one did not go so far as to 
 declare them to be better and truer than Christianity, still the 
 general opinion was that they were quite good enough for 
 the Hindus, and better adapted to their necessities than 
 Western forms of religion. Besides all this, the Company 
 took up the narrow-minded point of view that it would have 
 no European within its territories who was not engaged in its 
 service or who did not hold its passport : if any such person 
 were allowed, he would probably enter into business relation- 
 ships behind its back and thus lessen its gains; or he might 
 talk about its methods of colonial government on his return 
 home, and there were many things which there was every 
 reason to keep concealed from European eyes and ears. 
 
 (b) T/ie Serainpore Trio 
 
 With such surroundings and in such an atmosphere it was 
 of course difficult for missionary work to gain any foothold at 
 
 1 Stock, History of C. M.S., ii. p. 237, and Evang. Mission. Mag., 185S, p. 396. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 133 
 
 all. For Carey there were also other additional hindrances. 
 It was a certain Dr. Thomas,^ a Baptist, who had first 
 directed the attention of Carey and his friends to Bengal : 
 in the founding of their mission they hoped great things from 
 Thomas's medical experience, his knowledge of Bengali, and 
 his acquaintance with the English as well as the Hindus of 
 Calcutta. What they did not know was that Thomas, by his 
 unsteady and eccentric conduct, his foolish debts and his hot- 
 headed behaviour, had become the very enfant ferrible of 
 Calcutta society. Carey was not only discredited, but was 
 also brought into great difficulties through being connected 
 with him. It was because of Thomas that the missionaries 
 were refused permission to go out on an English ship, and 
 they were fortunate in finding a Danish one to take them. It 
 was owing to him that the i&w English people of decided 
 Christian character in Calcutta held entirely aloof from the 
 newcomers. Moreover, Carey and his friends were boycotted 
 in Calcutta because of their presumably apostolic ideal — that 
 missionaries should support themselves as soon as possible, 
 and earn their bread by the labour of their own hands. So 
 that the first six months in India were very trying for Carey 
 and his family, amongst the members of which Thomas must 
 also be reckoned. Under the most unfavourable conditions 
 they attempted several times to settle down as planters. The 
 slender supplies wdiich they had brought with them from 
 England were soon recklessly squandered by Thomas. An 
 attempt of Carey to obtain a profitable situation as a gardener 
 in Calcutta failed. He and Thomas had at length to content 
 themselves with a position as overseers of the Mudnabati indigo 
 plantation in the out-of-the-way district of Dinajpur, in Northern 
 Bengal. This post was obtained for them through the kindly 
 offices of Udny, who had to lay down a large sum of money 
 as security for their good behaviour. The six months of 
 privation had robbed Carey of a child and his wife of her 
 reason, and she remained in that unhappy condition until her 
 death. In this retired and unhealthy indigo district the sur- 
 vivors, at any rate as far as their missionary activities were 
 concerned, were as good as dead. A young missionary. Rev. 
 John Fountain, who had been sent out subsequently and had 
 been "smuggled" into the country as a man-servant, turned 
 out to be such a red-hot Radical in politics that he did nothing 
 
 ^ Dr. John Thomas had come to India as ship's doctor in 1786, and had for three 
 years been busily engaged in the service of that noble agent of the Company, Charles 
 Grant, in order to go as missionary to Gomalti in Bengal — where he spent ;!^iooo of 
 Grant's money. Owing to his unstable ways and his debts, all relationship between 
 the two men was at length, however, broken ofi". In 1792, therefore, he returned to 
 England, in order to gain new friends. 
 
134 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 but compromise both mission and missionaries. Under these 
 circumstances it was a direct leading of Providence that when 
 four other missionaries, amongst them being John Marshman 
 and W. VVard,^ were sent out in 1799 on board an American 
 ship, they were sent on by the captain of the ship, on his own 
 responsibiHty, to the Danish colony of Serampore, three miles 
 north of Calcutta, and placed under the protection of the 
 Danish flag. Carey perceived at once how much more advan- 
 tageous Serampore was for the starting-point and future exten- 
 sion of the mission, abandoned all the laborious and difficult 
 beginnings of work he had made in Mudnabati and Dinajpur, 
 and in 1800 took up his residence also at Serampore. 
 
 It appears little less than a miracle that under such 
 conditions and in spite of all these obstacles, the mission 
 became not only firmly rooted in Calcutta and Bengal by 
 181 3, but it even gained considerable power, before which in 
 the end all opposition on the part of the Company was silenced. 
 The principal role in this revolution of affairs was played by 
 the famous " Serampore Trio," Dr. Carey and his two faithful 
 comrades, Marshman and Ward. One cannot but esteem it 
 as an especially gracious interposition of Providence that God 
 should have brought this trio of wise and capable missionaries 
 together, and have placed them at the commencement of 
 mission work in India. They are its veritable pioneers. The 
 education of all three was defective : Carey had been a cobbler 
 from his earliest days. Ward a printer, Marshman a ragged- 
 school teacher. But all of them were of that type of self-made 
 men so frequently to be met with in English history, men of 
 insatiable appetite for learning and of practical ability, who 
 were dismayed by no difficulties, and whose industry and 
 patience knew no limits. Carey especially was a man of heroic 
 diligence. In all three the truth was abundantly verified that 
 
 ^ The other two, Brunsdon and Grant, died a few years later. Charles Grant, at 
 that time a Director of the Company, had given all four the sage advice to proceed 
 direct to Serampore, and to place themselves under the protection of the Danish flag. 
 The Danish commander at that time, Colonel Bie, and since then the Kings of 
 Denmark (up to 1845), deemed it a point of honour to be patrons of the youthful 
 mission. An inauspicious star ruled the first years of the Serampore Mission. The 
 very next year, 1800, the town was taken by the English, but after an occupation of 
 over fourteen months it was again surrendered ; from 1808 to 1815 it was once more 
 in English hands, but the English left the missionaries undisturbed. Serampore was 
 then at the height of its importance. It was the centre of all that commerce which 
 was not entirely in the hands of the English : for the other two foreign settlements up 
 the Ganges, the French Chandernagore and the Dutch Chinsurah. were occupied by 
 the English during this whole period. It must be remembered that these non- 
 English settlements were a veritable thorn in the flesh to the lords of the land, since 
 everybody who came into collision with the English, and especially debtors, blacklegs, 
 and the like, was accustomed to find a sure refuge there, far out of the reach of the 
 English police. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 135 
 
 the missionary calling is a high and noble school in which 
 characters are wrought to fine issues and where gifts are 
 developed which at home would probably have remained for 
 ever dormant. Moreover, they were all three of boundless 
 devotion to their calling, and filled with a holy determination 
 to dedicate their whole being, all they had and every power of 
 body and soul, to missionary work. And each acted as a 
 complement to the other so perfectly and harmoniously that 
 their living together tripled their power for work. They had 
 one household in common in Serampore until their death, and 
 stood by one another inseparably in weal and woe and during 
 years of severest trial. 
 
 At this time England had had a real foothold in India for 
 only about one generation, and as the first decades had been 
 fully occupied with the inevitable task of inaugurating the 
 new administration, people were but just beginning to investi- 
 gate the country. It is very suggestive that in spite of their 
 having been in possession for hundreds of years, neither Portugal 
 nor Holland had done anything of importance for the scientific 
 exploration of India. But no sooner did it come into the 
 hands of the English than Anglo-Saxon, and soon Teutonic 
 diligence also, grappled with the many problems which pre- 
 sented themselves on every hand. Sanskrit was rediscovered, 
 and with its help comparative philology came into being. The 
 old Indian Vedic and Epic literature was brought to light, 
 and the new world of ancient Indian history attracted many 
 investigators. The flora and fauna of the wondrous tropic 
 belt was systematised, and one new species after another was 
 discovered. In short, it was an era of great awakening for 
 science in its most varied branches. At such a time it was 
 remarkable that a missionary. Dr. Carey, should quickly take 
 an important, nay rather, a commanding place in the ranks 
 of the pioneers of scientific research. A happy series of events 
 contributed thereto. The training of Anglo-Indian officials 
 left much to be desired ; very frequently unsuitable or in- 
 sufficiently trained persons were sent out. Governor-General 
 Lord Wellesley therefore conceived the plan of erecting a 
 College in Calcutta for the training of candidates for the 
 Indian civil and military services, and of making a three years' 
 course there obligatory ; and he was wise enough to attach 
 special importance to the fact that young officials must be 
 made acquainted with the languages of the country. The 
 College was built at Fort William, near Calcutta, in 1801.^ 
 
 ^ It will easily be understood that the English Directors of the Company viewed 
 this very costly institution in anything but a friendly light. They contended — and 
 we cannot but admit the correctness of their opinion — that the thorough training of 
 
136 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Carey, who by his recently pubHshed translation of the New 
 Testament into Bengali had proved himself to be a complete 
 master of that language^ — in fact, the greatest living student 
 of it — was made Master, and later, Professor of Bengali, Sanskrit, 
 and Marathi. This eminent position brought him, together 
 with a princely salary of ^1200 per annum, a multitude of 
 scientific activities and, thanks to his unceasing diligence, soon 
 made a brilliant scholar of him. He gained so complete a 
 command of the ever-difficult Sanskrit that he could speak it 
 fluently, and published a Sanskrit Grammar and Dictionary ; 
 he edited three volumes of the Ramayana and other old 
 Sanskrit works ; soon became the first authority on those 
 dialects of Aryan origin which still survived, and was tireless 
 in the composition of grammars and text-books in them. 
 Besides this, he was one of the cleverest students of Indian 
 flora, and he kept up a much-admired botanical garden in 
 Serampore at his own expense. He founded the Agricultural 
 and Horticultural Society of Bengal, which soon became one 
 of the most renowned and influential societies of the capital. 
 The grateful Society honoured its modest founder by placing 
 his bust in marble in their Assembly Hall. Finally, Carey 
 was a member of a large number of the learned societies of 
 Europe, and was in constant correspondence with the first 
 Orientalists and botanists of his time. 
 
 English officials could be better accomplished in the healthy climate of England 
 than in the damp heat of fever-swept Calcutta, and that a good general education 
 according to English methods was at least as important for them as a knowledge of 
 specific Indian subjects. They therefore founded Haileybury in England as a rival 
 institution. Fort William College came to an end in 1830, but it did much good 
 work during the thirty years of its existence. Haileybury too went down, after the 
 Charter of 1853 had taken the magnificently paid Indian posts out of the hands of 
 the clique of Directors, who always filled them with their own creatures and proteges, 
 and had opened them to all British subjects. Another missionary besides Carey was 
 also Professor for a tin-.e at the Fort V^^lliam College, the German Patzold, a former 
 Danish missionary at Madras, being installed as Professor of Tamil. (Translator's 
 Note. — The college at Haileybury just mentioned lasted from 1806 to 1858. The 
 present public school dates from 1862.) 
 
 ^ Carey has peculiar claims on our regard because of what he did for the Bengali 
 language. Of the modern Aryan languages of India, only two, Hindi and Marathi, 
 had in his day an original prose literature. In Bengali there were nothing but 
 "conceited" poems, the contents of which were of a religious or philosophic nature 
 and were little known ; in fact, they had well-nigh fallen into oblivion. Carey was 
 the creator of Bengali prose. And how powerfully he impressed his own great 
 personality on a task so apparently opposed to the ends he had in view, may be 
 seen when one remembers that even to-day the Bengali language bears his ineffaceable 
 stamp. He held it to be his duty to regenerate and enrich modern Indian speech 
 with words borrowed from Sanskrit, just as modern French is enriched by mots 
 savants taken from Latin. This lavish besprinkling of their language with Sanskrit 
 words is so remarkably to the taste of Bengali writers that it has remained the most 
 striking characteristic of their language — though whether it tends towards the 
 development, and is to the advantage, of that language is a question upon which 
 present-day philologists differ. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 137 
 
 This active scientific life in the midst of which Carey now 
 found himself naturally produced a very considerable literature. 
 It was of course inconvenient for Anglo-Indian writers to have 
 their books printed in England, because when that was done 
 they could not correct the proofs, and also because there were 
 not enough type-setters qualified to undertake work of such 
 an academic character. In India, on the other hand, printing 
 was still in its infancy and scarcely adequate to satisfy the 
 most modest demands. Once more it was providential that 
 Carey should have at his side the old printer Ward, who 
 through extraordinary industry made himself master of his 
 subject and built a magnificent printing-house, fitted up with 
 its own paper-mill and type-foundry, in Serampore. For 
 many of the tongues of India and Eastern Asia type was here 
 first cast, and the earliest printed matter in such languages first 
 brought out. Brilliant scholars like Colebrooke the Orientalist 
 and Roxburgh the botanist sent their works here to be printed. 
 New days brought to the Anglo-Indians new practical 
 problems, and not the least of these was the educational one. 
 It was not at that time a hard-and-fast rule — since justified by 
 experience — to send the children of Europeans, whilst still 
 quite young, to be educated in England. Besides, the rapidly 
 increasing number of Eurasians demanded the installation of 
 schools and places of education. Once again Serampore led 
 the way. The former ragged-school teacher Marshman found 
 here a wide field for most useful activity. Together with his 
 equally enthusiastic wife, Hannah Marshman, he founded a 
 school for the children of educated parents which was attended 
 before long by children of both sexes from the very highest 
 families downwards, and which maintained its high reputation 
 until Marshman's death in 1837. 
 
 Finally, the public press was at this time practically non- 
 existent. Every attempt to create or to influence public opinion 
 was looked upon by the ruling classes with distrust. And yet 
 it was of the very deepest moment to the new lords of the 
 land that they should get into closer touch with the Hindus, 
 that they should understand them and be understood by them. 
 It demanded the utmost tact and a very thorough knowledge 
 of the whole situation for any one to dare to found a newspaper. 
 And here once more Serampore made the start. After various 
 small attempts, the three comrades founded in 181 8 a Bengali 
 newspaper, SamacJiar Darpan (the News -Mirror), and an 
 English magazine, the Friend of hidia. Especially was the 
 latter, during its lifetime of fifty-seven years (1818-1875), a most 
 influential organ, and in all humane reforms, in the exposure 
 of heathen outrages, and in the fight against the evil practices 
 
138 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 of heathenism, it won for itself high name and praise. In this 
 connection it should be noted that from the very beginning 
 the Men of Serampore took up a neutral and loyal standpoint 
 in politics, and they never once gave way to the temptation, 
 which w^as in Danish Serampore an oft-recurring one, to agitate 
 against the English Government. This was the more praise- 
 worthy as, according to the widespread prejudice of the time, 
 they were suspect to the authorities as " Anabaptists and 
 democrats." By this upright political conduct they set a 
 splendid example, which has since been almost universally 
 followed by missionaries of all nationalities in India, and they 
 thus rendered an invaluable service to the cause of Protestant 
 missions. 
 
 It will be easily understood that labours so many-sided and 
 of such great scientific and practical utility soon created for 
 the Serampore Brethren a unique position in India, as well as 
 in England. In India the most distinguished individuals, even 
 the Governors-General, held it almost an honour to hold inter- 
 course with Carey. Serampore became a much visited shrine 
 for travellers of every description. And in England in every 
 circle of society not totally blinded by prejudice the opinion 
 ran, " If that is ' missions,' we can only be heartily thankful and 
 wish them every success." Of course to-day we are all agreed 
 that that part of the work of the Men of Serampore which 
 has just been described was only loosely connected with real 
 missionary enterprise, and if two or three missionaries were 
 to enter upon the same branches of activity in India nowadays 
 we should probably regard them most critically. But the 
 historian has to appraise justly the position of things as they 
 were at a given time, and before the door which the Serampore 
 Trio opened so widely for Protestant missions every criticism 
 is hushed to silence. 
 
 Alongside this comprehensive and many-sided general work 
 they also did a great deal for missions financially. They were 
 in a specially favourable position for so doing. The enormous 
 salary which Carey drew as Professor at Fort William College 
 and Government Translator, the very considerable returns made 
 by some of his scientific books, the large profits of the two 
 schools directed by the Marshmans, and the income from the 
 journalistic branch of their work, put them in possession of very 
 large sums of money. And they were unselfish enough to put 
 by an ever-dwindling amount, at the very highest a tenth, for 
 their own personal needs or, more particularly, to supply the 
 wants of poor relatives. When Carey died in 1834, he was so 
 poor that the greater part of his library had to be sold in order 
 to bring together a small capital sum for one of his sons who 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 139 
 
 was in need. AH the income flowed into a common purse, and 
 was used according to the best of their power and knowledge 
 for the building up of the kingdom of God. 
 
 We can only speak briefly of the little congregation of the 
 faithful in and around Serampore who from 1801 onwards 
 gradually came over to the side of the missionaries. For a time 
 it seemed as though Carey would accomplish great things in 
 this respect also. Within six years 96 adults were baptized, 
 amongst them being six Brahmans and nine Muhammadans. 
 But no far-reaching movement came of it. After Puri, Serampore 
 is the principal seat of Jagannath worship ; in the neighbour- 
 hood stands the famous shrine of Tarakeshwar. It is not 
 propitious soil for missionary effort. In spite of much preaching 
 in the bazaars, the cause at Serampore to-day has only increased 
 to 238 members. But the missionary labour of the Men of 
 Serampore was, like all their work, conducted on broad lines ; 
 it embraced the whole of India, nay, the whole of Southern Asia. 
 It expressed itself chiefly in three directions. 
 
 Carey's dearest project was to give the Holy Scriptures to 
 all the people of Asia in their own tongue. The translation of 
 the Bible he regarded as his life-work ; all his philological 
 studies at Fort William College were made to contribute to it ; 
 the entire printing works at Serampore was really erected for 
 the printing of the Bible. At Mudnabati Carey's first work had 
 been to translate the New Testament into Bengali : the reading 
 of the proofs of the eighth edition of the same book was the last 
 thing he did, as he lay on his death-bed. If we sum up what 
 Carey and his two associates translated themselves, what they 
 had translated by their pundits but personally revised and 
 corrected, and then what translations of the Bible were given 
 them by friendly missionaries to be brought out by the 
 Serampore press, we find that they worked upon at least 
 forty translations of the whole Bible or parts of it. Carey's 
 special share of these was the translation of the whole Bible 
 into Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit, and numerous 
 portions of the Bible into other Indian languages and dialects. 
 Almost all the important tongues and many of the dialects of 
 India, and in addition Maldivese, Javan, Burmese, Malayan, 
 and Chinese, — Marshman's hobby, — are represented in the 
 Serampore publications. Modern Indian missions begin with 
 a heroic attempt to give the Bible to all the peoples of the 
 Southern Asia in their mother tongue ; and this magnificent 
 idea practically found its expression at Serampore. It must be 
 frankly admitted that not one of these Serampore versions of 
 the Bible is in use to-day. Soon after their publication, even, 
 some were found to be inaccurate in language and imperfect 
 
I40 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 in idiom, and some indeed were so faulty that they had to be 
 replaced by completely new versions. Even the best of them, 
 such as Carey's Bengali and Sanskrit Bibles, have been so 
 thoroughly revised by gifted linguists of later times, such as 
 Yates and Wenger, that they may almost be termed new 
 versions. In spite of all their linguistic ability, Carey and his 
 colleagues scarcely realised the difficulty of their task when 
 they attempted to Christianise heathen languages and transform 
 them into vessels meet for their new and sacred contents. They 
 translated the Bible into the different languages literally and 
 at haphazard, just as a clever and diligent Sixth Form boy 
 might translate the Laocoon'^ into Latin — perhaps with a 
 correct rendering of the words, and such as a Roman might 
 in a case of necessity have understood, but not in the least what 
 a Cicero or a Caesar would have spoken or written ! It has 
 become more and more doubtful since Carey's time whether it 
 is either desirable or advisable to commence mission work 
 among the heathen with translations of the Bible. For one 
 thing, even in the case of an ancient and cultured people like 
 the inhabitants of India, the number of those who can read 
 even in our own day is insignificant — what is the good of 
 literature for the masses who cannot read ? So that, in spite 
 of the inspiring and undoubtedly true narratives of isolated 
 cases of conversion which have taken place simply and solely 
 through reading the Bible, we must not exalt unduly the mere 
 dissemination of the Scriptures, especially at the initiation of 
 missionary work. It may indeed spread abroad a certain 
 general knowledge of Christianity, but in the majority of cases 
 it is found to be of potential value only in connection with and 
 as a means of following up the preaching of the missionary. 
 P'rom this point of view the great majority of the Serampore 
 translations of the Bible came into existence before their time. 
 Despite this criticism, however, — which it is easy to make with 
 the accumulated experience of a century of fruitful Bible 
 translation behind us, — it was an entirely marvellous and, 
 as far as missionary history goes, a simply unique accomplish- 
 ment that at Carey's death the entire Bible should have been 
 issued in six complete translations, the entire New Testament 
 in twenty-three more, and besides these separate books of the 
 Bible in ten other languages. 
 
 Carey and his helpers had, however, another great ambition : 
 as far as possible to begin missionary labour amongst every 
 people into whose speech they had translated the Bible. To 
 
 ^ (Translator's Note. — Laokoon, oder ilher die G^-eitzcn der Malerci und dcr 
 Poesie. The famous treatise on esthetics published by the great German critic 
 Lessing in 1766.) 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 141 
 
 this intent they sent out their envoys to Benares, Agra, and 
 Delhi ; to Jessore, Barisal, Dacca, and Chittagong in Eastern 
 Bengal ; to Dinajpur and Katvva in Northern Bengal ; to the 
 Khasia tribes in Assam ; to Orissa, Nagpur, and even Bombay ; 
 to Burma, to the Moluccas, to Java. The English Baptists 
 still occupy for the most part the stations planted by the Men 
 of Serampore with such exultant energy in the first two 
 decades of the last century — but with this difference, that 
 to-day they by no means retain their hold upon all the land 
 which was then possessed. With regard to this phenomenal 
 extension of the work, criticism must again proceed cautiously. 
 The Serampore Brethren did indeed found all these stations, 
 but they founded, and for long years supported, them entirely 
 out of their own means ; they were willing to pay for them 
 hundreds of thousands of pounds which they had first won by 
 the sweat of their brow. All honour to such burning enthusiasm ! 
 And they never shrank from relinquishing districts they had 
 already taken possession of, if there appeared on the scene 
 another Missionary Society which they could trust to carry 
 on the work with greater energy and more thoroughness. 
 Nevertheless we cannot rid ourselves of the impression that 
 in their pious zeal they entered into engagements far beyond 
 their strength. It was therefore a good thing that the work 
 in Burma, which they began in the years 1808-18 18, was 
 subsequently taken over by the American Baptists, the work 
 in Orissa by the General Baptists, that in the Khasia Hills by 
 the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, and that that in the Malayan 
 Archipelago spontaneously came to a standstill when the Dutch 
 regained the supremacy there. In spite of all this curtailment, 
 it was a fine inheritance which the Three left when they laid 
 down their toil : eighteen well-equipped mission stations and 
 a fairly extensive system of elementary schools, especially in 
 the neighbourhood of Serampore. 
 
 With these far-reaching missionary operations was associated 
 the third great project of the Men of Serampore. For their 
 many mission stations they needed a numerous missionary 
 personnel. Since they had separated from the B.M.S. in 
 1 816, and from that date had remained entirely independent — 
 as we shall shortly narrate more particularly — they conceived 
 the elaborate plan of establishing a missionary Seminary of 
 their own in Serampore (181 8-1 821), where they intended to 
 train their own missionaries, principally from amongst the Indian 
 Christians. They were of opinion that such missionaries would 
 be considerably less costly than Europeans, and that they had 
 reason to be so satisfied with those already in their service as 
 to proceed to a rapid augmentation of their number. As it 
 
142 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 was their custom, however, to do everything on a large scale, 
 they determined to make their Seminary an institution for 
 higher education, almost a kind of Indian University, Within 
 its walls Sanskrit and Arabic, Bengali and English, natural 
 science and classical literature were to be taught. The 
 Governor-General endowed a chair in medicine. The King of 
 Denmark granted the College the right of conferring degrees 
 on the same lines as was done in European universities. It 
 was thus a most thoroughly and splendidly equipped College. 
 We are again struck with admiration for the three doughty 
 missionaries who paid out of their own pockets almost the 
 entire cost (more than ;^i 5,000) of this building — which would 
 have done credit to any University — and who for years met 
 heavy liabilities in order to carry out this their pet scheme. 
 They intended that at their death the professors of this College 
 would assume the direction of their entire missionary work. 
 Yet although we are compelled to acknowledge the heroic self- 
 sacrifice of the Three Brethren, we cannot hide from ourselves 
 the fact that the project contained great weaknesses. A College 
 with such academic ambitions could only succeed in Calcutta, 
 certainly never in the remote little township of Serampore. It 
 was premature so long as the intermediate rungs in the educa- 
 tional ladder remained incomplete and the true foundation of 
 academic studies unlaid. And the idea of converting India by 
 means of independent and unattached Indian Christians is 
 still unfortunately for several reasons an unrealised and Utopian 
 dream. 
 
 The stamp of real greatness distinguishes all the projects 
 and the enterprises of the Serampore Brethren ; and it was a 
 tragic circumstance that these lives, which had ever been " in 
 labours more abundant," should be embittered during a decade 
 and a half by a quarrel of the most petty character with the 
 Society which Carey had himself founded, and which really 
 existed on the strength of his success — the Baptist Missionary 
 Society. We have already mentioned that Carey came out to 
 India with the intention of relinquishing all support from home 
 as soon as possible. He and his two friends received at the 
 very most from the Missionary Committee a total sum of ;^i5oo, 
 and before the outbreak of the quarrel in 18 16 they had paid 
 back this amount at least twentyfold — in fact, their personal 
 gifts to the mission at that time came to close upon ^^1500 
 annually. But the mission premises at Serampore and part of 
 the premises taken over by the Three for missionary purposes 
 in other places stood in the name of the Baptist Missionary 
 Society. After the deaths of Fuller, Sutcliff, and Ryland, 
 co-founders with Carey of the Society and his lifelong friends, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 143 
 
 and after a new generation, under the Missionary Secretary, 
 Dr. Dyer, had come into the Mission House at home, the 
 Society attempted to assert its legal rights and to appoint 
 missionaries to Serampore as it thought fit. In petty fashion 
 criticism was levelled against the manner of life, the successes, 
 and the character of the three great men. After his first arrival 
 in India Carey never again set foot on English soil, and Marsh- 
 man did not pay his first visit home until 1826, after an absence 
 of twenty-seven years. They were thus practically powerless 
 against the intrigues of the younger generation in England, 
 with whom unfortunately several of the junior Baptist 
 missionaries in India made common cause. There ensued a 
 hateful literary feud extending over a period of more than 
 fifteen years. The Men of Serampore could only declare their 
 withdrawal from the mission they themselves had brought into 
 being. What a pity it was that the younger men understood 
 so little their uniqueness and their greatness ! To-day we can 
 only read the annals of this unworthy strife with the deepest 
 regret, and we cannot but rejoice that the Serampore Trio 
 showed their real greatness to the very end, in that, through 
 their testamentary arrangements, they closed up — after their 
 deaths, at any rate — the rift which had been opened, and, in 
 spite of everything, made their own Missionary Society sole 
 heir to their entire work. Ward died of cholera in 1823 ; 
 William Carey, venerated and beloved as any patriarch, of old 
 age on June 9th, 1834 ; Marshman three and a half years later. 
 Their colleagues, all of whom they themselves had appointed, 
 and the professors of the College, especially Marshman's highly 
 gifted son, a most talented writer, undertook the direction of 
 the work until 1846. Then the entire mission was handed over 
 to the Baptist Missionary Society. The latter continued the 
 Serampore College until 1883, on what was practically the 
 original foundation, complying only with the fresh regulations 
 of the Government from time to time ; in that year, however, 
 they allowed it to come to an end. To-day the Baptist 
 Seminary for teachers and preachers for the whole of Bengal 
 is housed in the stately College buildings. Since the town and 
 district of Serampore was surrendered by the Danes in 1845 the 
 old mission station has also lost much of its importance. It 
 is simply an outpost of Calcutta — and a much visited shrine for 
 friends of missions who may be travelling in India. 
 
 (c) Other Pioneers. 1792-1813 
 
 The importance of India as the most valuable of England's 
 colonial possessions, the growing acquaintance with its primeval 
 
144 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 history and its countless millions of heathen, and the inspiring 
 example of Carey and his co-workers, all tended to direct 
 the immediate attention of friends of missions in English 
 Christendom upon India. But the obstacles offered by the 
 coldly repellent and even hostile attitude of the East India 
 Company were great. They were vividly illustrated during the 
 last few years of the eighteenth century by the Haldane case. 
 Fired by Carey's reports, a rich and highly esteemed Scotch 
 landowner, a former officer in the marines, Robert Haldane by 
 name, sold part of his property near Airthrey and determined, 
 with the help of three clergymen, who afterwards became very 
 famous, to start a mission on a large scale at Benares. He 
 intended to take out with him a complete equipment for a 
 printing establishment and a complete staff of teachers and 
 catechists. But in spite of influential connections in Govern- 
 ment circles, he found it impossible to obtain permission even 
 to sail for India, ostensibly because of his Radical leanings in 
 politics. After that, the entire scheme was of course abandoned. 
 This was a case in which the East India Company succeeded 
 in hindering a missionary expedition from setting out for India. 
 It was more difficult to get rid of such expeditions when once 
 they had landed there. In the year 1812 the two first American 
 missionaries, Judson and Newell, arrived in Calcutta. They at 
 once gave notice of their arrival to the police, and declared 
 openly that they had come with the intention of establishing 
 a mission in Bengal. A few weeks later six other missionaries, 
 three Englishmen and three Americans, arrived in quick suc- 
 cession. That made eight new missionaries in a short space 
 of time ; and at such an abundance the anxious English were 
 filled with terror. The five Americans were summarily expelled. 
 Three of them, Judson, Newell, and Rice, obtained with difficulty 
 permission to betake themselves to the out-of-the-way island of 
 Mauritius. At the mouth of the Hooghly, however, Judson 
 found a ship bound for Burma, at that time still an independ- 
 ent country, and fled thither. Rice returned for the time being 
 to North America. The two other Americans secretly made 
 their escape to Bombay, but a letter of arrest was immediately 
 sent after them, ordering their deportation to England. The 
 devout Governor of Bombay, Sir Evan Nepean, desired to 
 protect them as far as he had the power to do so, but the 
 two missionaries trusted even his influence so little that they 
 decided to flee to Ceylon. They were overtaken, however, on 
 the way by a stern order from Nepean commanding their 
 instant return to Bombay. Of the three Englishmen who 
 arrived simultaneously in Calcutta, two had sought refuge in 
 Danish Serampore, and one in Dutch Chinsurah. But it was of 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 145 
 
 no use ; they were ordered to be sent back to England. One 
 of them was successful in " slipping away " to Java, which was 
 then governed by the humane Sir Stamford Raffles. Another, 
 the Rev. Mr. Johns, was sent back to England, in spite of all 
 his protests, on board one of the Company's ships, and after his 
 repatriation a bill of over i^SOO for travelling expenses was 
 presented to his Society ! The Company maintained its right 
 to expel instantly any European who proceeded to India with- 
 out its express permission, or who remained there without one 
 of its specially dravvn-up passes. It vindicated this right in the 
 most ruthless fashion. Missionaries, as such, received a permit 
 only in rare cases, and were thus thrown entirely on the good- 
 will of the local authorities. And from the intrigues of these 
 latter they were not safe even when they had resided at a place 
 for years. In the year 181 1, Rev. J. Chamberlain, a Baptist 
 missionary, received a pass for Agra. Scarcely had he com- 
 menced his labours there when, by order of the commander of 
 the city, he was escorted back into Bengal by a convoy of 
 Hindu sepoys. Notwithstanding this, he again found his way 
 into Hindustan as private tutor to the children of an English 
 official ; but he was once more expelled, this time by special 
 order of the Governor-General ! It was in face of opposition 
 such as this on the part of the all-powerful officials that 
 Protestant missions in India were initiated. 
 
 The London Missionary Society, which had been founded in 
 1795, sent its first agent. Rev. Nathaniel Forsyth, to Calcutta 
 in 1798. After feeling his way for a short time, he gave up all 
 hope of evangelising that inhospitable city, and removed to the 
 town of Chinsurah, situated some twenty-eight miles north of 
 Calcutta, and then belonging to Holland. There, together with 
 Rev. R. May, who was sent out to his help in 181 2, he dedi- 
 cated himself chiefly to the creation or the development of 
 elementary schools — and without any immediate success. The 
 London Society was eager for new enterprises. It wanted to 
 stake out claims as quickly as possible at other points of the 
 British possessions; Madras, Surat, Vizagapatam, Tranquebar, 
 and other well-known places were written on its programme, 
 and as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century it 
 delegated missionaries to all these places. Vizagapatam was 
 taken possession of by Revs. Aug. des Granges and George 
 Cran in 1805. Of those appointed to Surat one entered the 
 service of the Government at Bombay ; the other, finding no 
 opening for missionary activity, undertook the temporary 
 direction of a men's asylum at Madras. There was but one 
 door actually opened to the Society, and that from a quarter 
 whence they least expected it. In 1797 the Society for 
 
146 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge had sent out to Calcutta 
 Rev. W. T. Ringeltaube ; he had returned to England a short 
 time afterwards in despair, but had then entered the service of 
 the London Missionary Society, and 'now went out a second 
 time, to Tranquebar. There he was attracted by a remarkable 
 travelling Sannyasi of Travancore, and after overcoming many 
 obstacles at length took up his residence in Myladi, near the 
 southern point of India, and found there, especially among the 
 populous Shanans, an astonishingly fertile field. In ten years 
 (1806-181 5) he brought together more than 1000 Christians, of 
 whom Qtj were in 18 12 admitted to Holy Communion after 
 most careful examination. In an age of difficult beginnings 
 this success was all the more noteworthy since it was the first, 
 and so far, the only pledge of the richer and more plentiful 
 harvests that were to be gathered in later. 
 
 In Church of England circles the attitude towards Indian 
 missions was for the time being that of contented waiting. 
 It is true that the Society for Promoting Christian Know- 
 ledge supported the Danish Mission ; but with the first 
 missionaries which it sent out on its own account the Society 
 had nothing but misfortune. When Charles Grant, to whom 
 we shall shortly refer in greater detail, promised a regular 
 annual subscription of ^^360 on behalf of a missionary who 
 should also preach in Kiernander's "Old Church" ^ — which Grant 
 and two of his friends had bought at a sale by auction — a 
 certain Rev. A. J. Clarke was sent out. But he soon proved 
 to be anything but a success, and left the service of the 
 Society within the year. In 1797 they sent out the German 
 Ringeltaube, but in two years' time he lost heart and returned 
 to England, to the painful surprise of the Society. 
 
 It was incomparably more important that a small but active 
 and influential circle of Anglicans was formed in Calcutta, the 
 members of which stood shoulder to shoulder and won to them- 
 selves great renown for laying the real foundations of the 
 missionary activity of the English Church. These were the 
 distinguished official of the Company, Charles Grant, — who 
 was, from 1797, one of the Company's Directors in London, — 
 Sir Robert Chambers and his brother William, and George 
 Udny. The devout and far-seeing Grant was already writing 
 the book which has since become famous. Observations on the 
 State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, 
 particularly %vith Respect to Morals ; and the Means of Improving 
 it. He laid this truly philanthropic pamphlet before the 
 Court of Directors in 1800, but so little notice was taken of 
 it that it soon lay forgotten in the dusty archives of the 
 1 Cf. p. 130. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 147 
 
 Company. But when, in 18 13, the battle over the renewal of 
 the Company's Charter broke out, Parliament ordered Grant's 
 essay to be published, and it contributed not a little to the 
 spreading abroad and the strengthening of views favourable to 
 the cause of missions. Associated with these officials there was 
 a small number of devout and learned Government chaplains, 
 the " pious chaplains," as they were derisively termed. The 
 first of these was Rev. David Brown, a friend of the great 
 Cambridge preacher, Charles Simeon. He had been sent out 
 by the Company as chaplain and governor of their military 
 orphanage. Later he became the clergyman of Kiernander's 
 " Old Church " for a quarter of a century, and he soon made it the 
 spiritual centre of Calcutta, from which streams of blessing 
 poured forth upon Anglo-Indian society. He was made 
 Chancellor of Fort William College, which had been estab- 
 lished by Hastings, and died in 1812. Claudius Buchanan, 
 another of these chaplains, had lived in Calcutta since 1797, 
 and Hastings created him Vice-Provost of the College.^ In 
 1 806- 1 807, at the request of the Government of Madras, he under- 
 took a tour for purposes of discovery and inquiry amongst the 
 Syrian Christians in Travancore, and in 181 1 he published the 
 results of his investigations in a book entitled CJiristian Re- 
 searches in Asia, that quickly ran through four editions in 
 England, and was also translated into other European languages. 
 He died on February 9th, 181 5. The third and fourth members 
 of this group were Revs. Thomas Thomason and Daniel Corrie, 
 who were sent as chaplains to the troops far up country, to 
 Cawnpore, Benares, Agra and Meerut, and who were every- 
 where adepts at finding out the points at which missionary work 
 ought afterwards to be commenced. The fifth and most brilliant 
 of all was Henry Martyn, who was born on February i8th, 1781 
 and died on October i6th, 18 12. The child of godly parents, 
 he came whilst a student at Cambridge under the influence of 
 the powerful University preacher, Charles Simeon, and obtained 
 the appointment to one of the chaplaincies of the East India 
 Company in 1804. He landed in Calcutta on April 22nd, 1806, 
 and immediately entered into a friendship of the most intimate 
 nature Hvith the brethren who have already been mentioned, 
 and whose ideas and dispositions corresponded with his own. 
 In addition to his duties as chaplain to the garrison, which 
 
 ^ Even at so great a distance from England, Buchanan did a great deal to awaken 
 the interest of those in the homeland for Indian missions. Again and again he in- 
 stituted prize schemes, offering as much as ;i^50 in order to encourage the cultured 
 youth of England to write English, Latin, or Greek odes or scientific works on the 
 subject of missions and of India. The first English writer of importance on 
 missionary topics, Hugh Pearson, in this way received his first incentive to such 
 work. 
 
148 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 afterwards took him to Dinajpur and Cawnpore, he plunged 
 with ardent zeal into the study of those languages which were 
 most important for missionary work, Hindi and Hindustani, 
 Persian and Arabic. He translated the entire New Testament 
 and the Common Prayer Book into Hindustani. Then, in i8i i, 
 he proceeded to Persia, and after a ten months' residence in 
 Shiraz, where he zealously disputed with Muhammadan scholars, 
 he journeyed via Tabriz into Asia Minor. His health, how- 
 ever, which had ever been delicate and which was completely 
 shattered through mental overstrain, proved unable to support 
 the enormous exertion of a journey through the wild rocky 
 highlands of Asia Minor, and he died in Tokat, at the early 
 age of thirty-one. Notwithstanding his youth and the short 
 time he laboured in India, scarcely any man except Carey 
 exercised such a deep and abiding influence on the history of 
 Indian missions during those first decades of the century as he. 
 His ardent piety, his overpowering eloquence, his fine-spirited 
 mysticism, and his brilliant genius left an ineffaceable impression 
 on the memory of all his friends. This group of congenial and 
 highly gifted men was full of great plans for the welfare of India. 
 In the first place, they still hoped to win over the Company to 
 their views. They divided Bengal into eight districts ; an 
 Anglican clergyman was to be officially appointed as special 
 State missionary in each district, his duties being the preaching 
 of the gospel, the establishment and oversight of schools, and 
 all the other tasks of a zealous missionary. The necessary 
 money was to be provided by the State. These proposals, 
 however, met with only a poor welcome. The Governor- 
 General, Lord Cornwallis, declared he could see no hope of 
 any good coming to the people of India by the adoption of 
 such proposals ; the Directors of the Company expressed them- 
 selves in the most vehement tones against them ; and the 
 consent of Parliament was withheld. But the chaplains were 
 neither discouraged nor repressed by this. They opened up 
 relations with Charles Simeon at Cambridge and with the 
 recently established Church Missionary Society (1799), in order 
 to try and prepare the way for extensive missionary activity 
 in India through the instrumentality of the new Society. In 
 the year 1807 they formed themselves into a "Corresponding 
 Committee " for the Society, " in order to render assistance to 
 the proposed station in the North- West Provinces." They 
 appointed Thomason as their secretary. 
 
 If the agents of English Societies found the soil so hard, it 
 is no wonder that the first missionaries of the " American Board 
 of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" (founded in 18 10 and 
 named for short the " American Board ") met with well-nigh 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 149 
 
 insurmountable obstacles. In 18 12 the Board sent five 
 missionaries to India in quick succession on board two ships 
 — Gordon Hall, Rice, Nott, Judson, and Newell. We 
 have already heard about the wanderings and distresses 
 of these pioneers. If at so short an interval after the War 
 of Independence the sentiments of the English had not been 
 specially favourable to Americans, they naturally became 
 very much less so when a fresh war broke out in 181 2. 
 Nevertheless Gordon Hall and Nott were finally allowed to 
 remain in Bombay in 181 3, owing to the intervention of the 
 friendly Governor, Sir Evan Nepean. Adoniram Judson and 
 Rice became Baptists whilst at Calcutta, and the former fled 
 from the officers of the Company to Rangoon ; he arrived there 
 on July 13th, 1 813, and founded a new mission, to the support 
 of which Rice summoned the Baptists of North America, 
 thereby inaugurating the " American Baptist Missionary 
 Union" in 18 14. 
 
 Taken all in all, it was a day of small things. About 181 2, 
 there existed mission stations at Serampore (still in the hands 
 of the Danes) whence Calcutta was worked ; out-stations of the 
 Baptists at Dinajpur, in the indigo district, where Carey had 
 laboured before settling in Serampore ; and at Jessore, in the 
 well-watered delta-district of Eastern Bengal. The London 
 Missionary Society was busy in Dutch Chinsurah and at 
 Vizagapatam. In Madras and the Tamil country no new work 
 had as yet sprung up alongside that of the veteran fathers of the 
 Danish Mission. In the Kanarese country there was only the 
 solitary station of Bellary, and that had been founded in 181 2. 
 In Bombay the first missionaries of a non-English Society, the 
 American Board, had after great anxiety just managed to obtain 
 a foothold. The only seed which appeared to be sprouting hope- 
 fully was the work of Ringeltaube in Southern Travancore. 
 
 (d) The Fight for the Charter ^/ 1813 
 
 The Charter of the Company had to be renewed every 
 twenty years. On the occasion of the proceedings in 1793, 
 William Wilberforce and his friends had made the attempt to 
 include in the Charter the following clause in favour of 
 missions : " It is the opinion of this House that it is the peculiar 
 and bounden duty of the British Legislature to promote by all 
 just and prudent means the interest and happiness of the 
 inhabitants of the British dominions in India, and that for these 
 ends such measures ought to be adopted as may gradually tend 
 to their advancement in useful knowledge and to their religious 
 and moral improvement." He moved, therefore, the following : 
 
I50 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 " Resolved, that the Court of Directors of the Company shall 
 be empowered and commissioned to nominate and send out 
 from time to time a sufficient number of skilled and suitable 
 persons, who shall attain the aforesaid object by serving as 
 schoolmasters, missionaries, or otherwise." Prudent and colour- 
 less as the wording of this resolution, the hotly attacked " pious 
 clauses," now appears to have been, the attempt to smuggle 
 them into the Charter failed before the violent agitation of 
 the opposite and influential party, led by men like Dundas. 
 Missions were excluded from British India for two more 
 decades. In the year 1813 the Charter had again to be 
 renewed, and the friends of missions determined to do all that 
 lay in their power on this occasion to win liberty of movement 
 for the messengers of the gospel in India. 
 
 In the meantime the Christian conscience of England had 
 awakened. The nineteen years' fight for the abolition of slavery 
 in the English colonies, and which had been brought to a 
 successful issue in 1807, had powerfully contributed to the 
 revival of essentially Christian views of life. Wilberforce 
 placed himself at the head of the new campaign for the freedom 
 of missions in India. It was a skilful move just at this time 
 to publish and circulate widely the already-mentioned work of 
 the widely respected Charles Grant, Concerning the State of 
 Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain. A 
 former Governor-General of India, Lord Teignmouth, likewise 
 lent his pen to the missionary cause. The recently founded 
 Missionary Societies and their representatives, especially Fuller 
 among the Baptists and C. Buchanan and Pratt amongst the 
 Anglicans, assisted Wilberforce by all means in their power. 
 No less than 850 petitions were laid on the table of the House 
 of Commons on behalf of the missionaries. 
 
 Nor were their opponents idle, especially former Indian 
 officials, the influential " Anglo-Indians." ^ The Sepoy rebellion 
 in the Vellore district of South India in August 1806, which 
 without the slightest justification was attributed to the 
 missionaries, gave them an opportunity of violently declaiming 
 against the mission of the " consecrated cobblers," which was " so 
 dangerous to the State." The small and unimportant mutiny 
 at Vellore had absolutely nothing whatever to do with the 
 missionaries. Neither in Vellore nor in the neighbourhood 
 did there exist one single mission station. Some alterations 
 had been ordered in the soldiers' uniforms, especially in the 
 arrangement of the turban. And the rebels had the firmly 
 rooted idea that the Company desired to make them break 
 caste and by guile or by force to make Christians of them. 
 ^ The Twinings, Prendergasts, Scott Warings, and men of that ilk. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 151 
 
 This insignificant circumstance sufficed to extinguish the last 
 spark of sympathy with missions on the part of those in 
 authority. Every kind of jest and satire was employed to 
 make missions and their supporters an object of ridicule or to 
 make them appear the enemies of the people. It was indeed a 
 hot " mission fray," as some one has called it. The opponents 
 of the clauses made use of language which was provocative to 
 a degree. Mr. Bensley, one of the Directors of the Company, 
 summed up his position in the following words : " So far from 
 approving the proposed clause or listening to it with patience, 
 from the first moment I heard of it I considered it the most 
 wild, extravagant, expensive, and unjustifiable project that ever 
 was suggested by the most visionary speculator."^ On June 
 23rd, 1 81 3, however, the victory was won, and on July 21st the 
 law received the royal assent. 
 
 Two resolutions contained the greater part of the ad- 
 missions desired by the missionary party. The 12th Resolution 
 ordered the creation of a bishop and three archdeacons, and 
 thus instituted the regime of the Church of England in India, 
 in order that English residents there might have thorough 
 pastoral care. When'Ve think, for instance, how faulty is the 
 spiritual oversight of the officials and settlers in our German 
 colonies even to this day, and that the means for enabling such 
 oversight to be rendered have to be raised by private subscrip- 
 tion, we must recognise what an important advance was made 
 by this resolution. 
 
 The 13th Resolution, the one in which the whole mission- 
 ary question was really involved, ran as follows : " Resolved, 
 that it is the opinion of this Committee that it is the duty 
 of this country to promote the interests and happiness of 
 the native inhabitants of the British dominions in India, and 
 that measures ought to be adopted as may tend to the intro- 
 duction among them of useful knowledge and moral improve- 
 ment. That in furtherance of the above objects sufficient 
 facilities shall be afforded by law to persons desirous of going 
 to, or remaining in, India for the purpose of accomplishing 
 those benevolent designs." That meant that the missionaries 
 were to be allowed to enter India and to reside there ; they 
 might preach, found churches, and discharge all spiritual duties ; 
 in a word, they might fulfil their missionary calling in its 
 completest and widest sense. But this liberal opening up of 
 the country at first affected none but British subjects, and 
 during the next two decades (18 13-1833) only the English and 
 Scotch missionary societies really obtained, to any considerable 
 extent, a firm footing in India. 
 
 ^ See Appendix M. 
 
152 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 In passing we may mention that a second subject of keenest 
 debate in the Charter conflicts of 1813 was the trade monopoly 
 of the Company in India. It had gradually come to be an 
 intolerable state of things that a limited and privileged society 
 should have exclusive rights of commerce with the richest land 
 in the world, and that all other Englishmen should not only be 
 prevented from trading there, but be likewise prevented from 
 setting foot on Indian soil. This was precisely the reason why 
 in such little Danish settlements as Serampore, and in such 
 Dutch settlements as Chinsurah and other places, a strong 
 rivalry, backed up by English money, was created, by means of 
 which these colonies sprang into fame. By the Charter of 181 3 
 this trade monopoly was taken away from the East India 
 Company. 
 
 The opponents of missions succeeded in inserting in the new 
 Charter a clause providing that a sum of not less than one lakh 
 of rupees (at that time about ;^ 10,000) was to be set aside 
 annually for the purpose of improving and grafting new life into 
 native Indian literature, of supporting native scholars and men 
 of letters, and of introducing and maintaining Western know- 
 ledge amongst the inhabitants of the British possessions. By 
 fostering both Oriental and Occidental science they hoped to 
 create a reliable counterpoise, a protecting breakwater against 
 the threatened deluge of missionary enterprise. They never 
 dreamed that through this grant for purposes of higher education 
 they were laying the foundation of the whole system of mission 
 schools and the " grant-in-aid " system in India. 
 
 It ought not to be forgotten that the concessions to missions 
 and to the Church were only wrung from the Company after 
 the most violent opposition and the most furious conflict. The 
 Company remained firmly determined, however, in spite of this 
 defeat, to maintain its old policy of " neutrality " — which in 
 reality was nothing but an almost boundless favouring of 
 Hinduism and Islam. But it could no longer hinder mission- 
 aries from streaming into India in ever increasing numbers. It 
 now concentrated its efforts upon the placing of as many 
 hindrances as possible in the way of the unwelcome guests. 
 For a considerable time to come native Christians were unable 
 to reckon on any assistance from the Company ; they were 
 rather slighted, driven forth, and treated with aversion and 
 contumely. Missions made their entry into India in spite of 
 the Company. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 153 
 
 (e) 181 3-1 833. The Advent of the great English 
 Missionary Societies 
 
 For convenience' sake, the history of Indian missions should 
 date from 1 8 1 3. From that year only were Protestant missionary 
 operations on a large scale possible, and, as a matter of fact, 
 undertaken by various societies. The opening up of India 
 through the Charter of 181 3 only concerned at first, as we have 
 already said, British subjects. To persons of any other nation- 
 ality no permission was as yet given either with regard to 
 trading, or freedom of circulation, or the carrying on of missionary 
 work. Very many English people, however, heard in this un- 
 commonly great and favourable opportunity for missionary 
 labour a call to redoubled activity and fresh enterprise. 
 Strangely enough, the Baptist Missionary Society, which had so 
 heroically rendered the earliest pioneer services, was just that 
 Society which did not take advantage of this mighty impulse to 
 the full. It is true that the Serampore Trio gave great and 
 magnificent proof of their wonder-working capabilities ; in a 
 series of rapid moves they extended their mission to the east, 
 north, and west ; they formed congregations and schools in 
 Calcutta ; they sent out itinerant preachers northwards and 
 eastwards throughout the thickly populated low country of 
 Bengal, and Gandulpura (two miles north of Serampore) was 
 chosen as the centre from which these preachers radiated. 
 Barisal in Eastern Bengal was occupied in 1829, Suri in the 
 Birbhum district in 181 8, Delhi in the far north-west in 1818, 
 Benares the chief citadel of Hinduism in 18 16, Agra in the 
 United Provinces in 181 1, Monghyr and Patna in Bihar in 
 1 8 16, Chittagong (or Islamabad) on the Burmese frontier in 
 1812. By 1823 Carey was able to write home that he and his 
 friends occupied 10 stations, with 25 English and Indian 
 missionaries. This marvellous activity, however, was a private 
 enterprise of the Men of Serampore, who paid all costs, 
 save in so far as friends contributed, out of their own 
 pockets. 
 
 The Baptist Missionary Society, from which, as we have 
 already narrated, the Serampore Trio had unfortunately been 
 compelled to withdraw, had in the meantime begun work in 
 Calcutta on its own account. Because of its rivalry with these 
 great men, however, this undertaking could never hope to 
 win genuine success; in 1823 it only numbered 5 stations, with 
 12 European and Indian workers. 
 
 Besides the great Baptist Missionary Society, the General 
 Baptist Missionary Society, which had been founded in 1816, 
 took the field in 1822, and selected as its special district Orissa, 
 
154 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 wisely limiting itself to, and concentrating its energies upon, 
 this single province. 
 
 The London Missionary Society was busy at the beginning 
 of this period with elementary schools at Chinsurah (which had 
 in the meantime become a British possession). As early as the 
 year 1815 it could point to 20 schools with 165 1 scholars, of 
 whom 258 were Brahmans, and in 1817 to as many as 36 schools 
 with 3000 scholars. And the English Commissioner at Chinsurah, 
 Gordon Forbes, was so delighted with this educational work 
 that he procured a monthly subsidy of 600 rupees^nd, later, 
 the large sum of 800 rupees for the missionaries — a precursor of 
 the "grant-in-aid" system. The missionary gain from these 
 schools was, however, only small. As Chinsurah was after all 
 nothing but an out-of-the-way country township, the London 
 Society transferred the headquarters of its work to Calcutta 
 in 1816. 
 
 As far as the English Government had any interest whatever 
 in the matter, it occupied itself solely with the spiritual needs of 
 the Anglicans ; the ecclesiastical oversight of English Dissenters 
 in India still left very much to be desired. Whenever, therefore, 
 there was to be found a congregation of Dissenters at a station, 
 the London Missionary Society's agents felt themselves in duty 
 bound to minister to it the Word and the sacraments according 
 to the forms it was accustomed to use. Even though a far from 
 inconsiderable part of the time and strength of some of their 
 most capable men were thus often lost to labour purely 
 missionary, yet they deemed it their duty to serve their fellow- 
 countrymen in this way. Thus in Dharamtola Street, in the 
 very centre of Calcutta, a stately building was erected for divine 
 worship, called the Union Chapel, towards which friends in 
 India alone contributed £4000 — a beautiful testimony, after the 
 former desolation, to the ever increasing willingness to render 
 help to spiritual undertakings. As a centre for its Calcutta 
 work the London Missionary Society chose Bhowanipur, one of 
 the southern suburbs of the city. Thence, in 1826, they 
 extended their work towards the south in the Sundarbans 
 district (the overgrown delta district of the countless Ganges 
 estuaries); they had already (1824) established a station north 
 of Calcutta at Berhampore. On their other mission field, in the 
 far south of India — a field which had come into the hands of 
 the Society through the labours of Ringeltaube — tremendous 
 progress continued to be made even after the unexplained 
 disappearance of that remarkable man. In place of the more 
 remote Myladi, Nagercoil and Neyoor were chosen as bases of 
 the work ; prior to 1840 a membership of 15,000 was registered ; 
 in the schools there were 7540 scholars, nearly looo of whom 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 155 
 
 were girls — a most extraordinary thing for the India of that 
 /day. Two printing establishments, a theological college, board- 
 ing schools, and other institutions, served in the uplifting of 
 these communities. Curiously enough, however, the London 
 Missionary Society concentrated its strength neither on its 
 Bengal work nor yet on that in Travancore. In the majestic 
 greatness and extent of the British possessions in India there 
 lay a challenge, which however might easily have become a 
 temptation, to seize instantly on as many points of vantage as 
 possible. In every direction there were places of " strategic 
 importance," and the example of Paul the Apostle, who rapidly 
 seized one after another the trade centres of the Eastern Roman 
 Empire, leaving to later evangelists the task of penetrating into 
 the interior of the different countries, appeared to justify a 
 similar method of procedure on a large scale. The London 
 Missionary Society established, therefore, the following stations : 
 in the Tamil country, Madras (18 13), Kumbakonam and Chittoor 
 (1825), Salem (1827), and Coimbatore (1830); in the Telugu 
 country (besides Vizagapatam which had been held since 1805), 
 Cuddapah (1822); in the Kanarese country, Bellary (1812), 
 Bangalore and Belgaum (1820) ; in Gujarat, Surat (18 19) ; and 
 in the North- Western Provinces, Benares (1820). This almost 
 simultaneous occupation of important positions, situated at such 
 a distance from one another and each having its own special 
 circumstances and environment, brought the London Missionary 
 Society into contact with seven of the principal tongues and 
 nationalities of India. Save for Travancore in the south, only 
 one of these stations, Cuddapah, has since become an important 
 centre; the rest have all declined in one direction or another. 
 Some, Hke Kumbakonam (1852), and Surat (1847), have been 
 handed over to other societies ; concerning others, negotiations 
 with a view to surrender have at any rate been mooted, but 
 nothing further has come of them. 
 
 Alongside these two great societies there now appeared as 
 a third new and important factor the Church of England, 
 together with the societies which owed to her their birth and 
 which derived from her their support. One of the most note- 
 worthy things gained by the Charter of 18 13 was that the 
 episcopal system of the Church of England was transferred to 
 India. A bishop and three archdeacons were for the time 
 being deemed adequate ecclesiastical equipment for the vast 
 colonial empire of India, including Ceylon, Australia, and South 
 Africa ! These were intended, however, primarily to be of 
 advantage not to Hindus and Muhammadans, but to the 
 English officials, soldiers, and traders. How the arrange- 
 ment gradually came to be of definite importance for 
 
156 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 foreign missionary work, and through what struggles and 
 difficulties it has passed on that account, will best be related in 
 another chapter. Here we will only relate one of them. The 
 first bishop appointed, Bishop Middleton (iS 14-1822), who was 
 otherwise no great friend of missions, conceived the excellent 
 design of founding a Missionary College in Calcutta, which 
 should serve various purposes at one and the same time. It 
 was to train young Indian Christians as preachers, catechists, 
 and school teachers; it was to impart a knowledge of the 
 English language to Muhammadans and Hindus ; it was to be 
 a kind of headquarters for the translation into Indian tongues 
 of the Bible, the Common Prayer Book, and other more or less 
 important works ; and it was to serve as a home and quiet place 
 of residence for young missionaries on their first arrival in India. 
 ;^6o,ooo was collected in England for the scheme. The Church 
 Missionary Society gave ;£'5000 out of its then very meagre 
 income, and a like sum was contributed by the Society for 
 Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, and the British and Foreign Bible Society. 
 The superintendence of this many-sided institution was in 1820 
 entrusted to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, a 
 Society of High Church principles which had been in existence 
 for over a centur>', and which was now introduced for the first 
 time to direct missionary work in India. It was to this College 
 that in 1821 it dispatched its first agents, two University 
 trained teachers. 
 
 We have already described the singular ill-fortune which 
 had attended the few representatives of the Society for Pro- 
 moting Christian Knowledge in the mission field ; in the year 
 1825 it withdrew altogether from distinctly missionar}' work in 
 India, and transferred all the stations and districts for which it 
 was financially responsible to the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel, which thus with one bound sprung into the very 
 front rank of the societies labouring in India. It was a long 
 time, however, before it was able fully to occupy this unsought- 
 for inheritance; only from 1835 onwards could it cope with 
 the demand for missionaries to any sufficient extent. Its first 
 independent work, like that of almost every society then labour- 
 ing in Calcutta, was begun in the so-called Twenty-four 
 Parganas and Sundarbans, thickly populated districts lying 
 to the south of Calcutta ; here it quickly founded a series of 
 stations and outposts. These were all supplied, though for the 
 time being only, with European missionaries. 
 
 With greater zeal, with larger means, and, for the most part, 
 with more distinguished men, the Church Missionary Society 
 (founded in 1799) stepped into the field immediately after the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 157 
 
 revision of the Charter. Although at first sight it appears to 
 have fallen into the same mistake as the London ^Missionar^' 
 Society, and to have taken over too many places at once, 
 thereby dissipating its energies, there was this important 
 difference between the two — that the Church Missionar}- Society 
 entered a well-prepared field, and set itself to accomplish clearly 
 defined tasks. Everywhere it associated itself with the work 
 of the Protestant chaplains, and with their help formed " Corre- 
 sponding Committees" in the three Indian capitals, Calcutta, 
 Aladras, and Bombay, in whose hands it placed the direction of 
 its affairs — a most laudable plan when the shortest period of 
 time in which a letter could be answered was ten months, and 
 when there was a sufficient number of intelligent and devoted 
 clerg}- and laymen in all three cities willing to dedicate them- 
 selves to the very responsible duty of directing the affairs of 
 the Society. Only a quarter of a century later was the 
 headquarters of the Society' transferred to the homeland, and 
 the Committees in India dissolved, though not without serious 
 friction. Founded in the }-ear 1812, the "Corresponding 
 Committee" at Calcutta quickly commenced operations in that 
 city and the region round about ; in Kidderpur its first school was 
 erected on a plot of ground presented by a friendly Brahman 
 (18 1 5), and in Dum Dum a second one was built shortly after- 
 wards. When the two first actual representatives of the Societj', 
 an Englishman named Greenwood and a German named 
 Schroter, were sent out in 1S16, the first mission station proper 
 was opened at Garden Reach, one mile south of Calcutta. 
 Then in 1S21 the centre of the work was established in the 
 very heart of the city, in the Mirzapur quarter, and there ample 
 premises and several schools were rapidly constructed. In 
 1 8 16 a devout soldier. Lieutenant Stewart, established a station 
 at Burdwan, to the north-west of Calcutta, which during the 
 years 1831-1S52 became widely known through its missionary', 
 Rev. J. J. \\'eitbrecht. Work in the United Provinces was 
 commenced rather earlier : the first representative of the 
 Society there was Abdul Masih, Henry INIartyn's only convert, 
 who was appointed to Agra in 181 3 to labour under the direction 
 of Chaplain Corrie ; he was ordained by Bishop Heber^ in 1826, 
 and was the first Indian clerg}-man to receive Anglican orders. 
 After Agra, the great militar}' depot ]\Ieerut (1815), Benares 
 (1817), Chunar near Benares (1S15), Gorakhpur (1823), 
 Azamgarh and Jaunpur (1831) were occupied in quick succession, 
 so that that district soon became a great centre of Anglican 
 
 ^ After he had pre\"iously been ordained by the Lutherans — a regrettable want of 
 consideration towards the sister Church of Germany on the part of such a lover 
 of peace as Heber. 
 
158 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 missionary work. A large legacy came very opportunely from 
 the famous Rajah Jay Narain Ghosal of Benares in 1818, by 
 means of which an extensive and splendidly endowed school was 
 acquired by the Church Missionary Society. The Jay Narain 
 College, although only a high school, has ever since been one of 
 the most influential schools of Benares. 
 
 A " Corresponding Committee " had likewise been formed 
 at Bombay in 1818, in consequence of which the Church 
 Missionary Society began work there in 1820. As Western 
 India proved to be a specially hard field, it was not until 1832 
 that a second post, Nasik, was founded. It was South India 
 which at this time principally engaged the attention of the 
 supporters of the Society. Through Chaplain Hough, a 
 missionary enthusiast, the indefatigable Rhenius was attracted 
 to Tinnevelly in 1820, and there he developed during a decade 
 and a half such an extensive work amongst the Shanan caste, 
 whose hearts were ever disposed to receive the gospel, that by 
 1835 there were no less than 11,186 baptized believers scattered 
 amongst 261 villages, and in 107 schools 2882 scholars were 
 being instructed. If to these we add some 4000 Christians, 
 who in this same district adhered to the Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel, and the 11,000 whom Ringeltaube of the 
 London Missionary Society had gathered together in the 
 immediately adjoining and similar districts of South Travan- 
 core, we have as early as 1835 in the extreme south of 
 India some 26,000 without reckoning the 15,000 left by the 
 Danish Mission in the Cauvery district. These two great groups 
 of Christians were at that time the crown and the rejoicing of 
 Protestant missions. 
 
 Through Claudius Buchanan's work. Christian Researches, 
 of which mention has already been made, the interest of 
 English Christians had been warmly kindled on behalf of 
 the ancient Syrian Church. The Church Missionary Society 
 profited by this wave of enthusiasm, and for twenty years 
 (1816-1836) it attempted, with most competent missionaries 
 and in a most praiseworthy and broad-minded fashion, to instil 
 new life into this ancient Christian Church, both morally and 
 spiritually. Unfortunately, in consequence of the adverse 
 attitude of the bishop and his party, all of whom were enemies 
 of reform, this effort had to be abandoned in 1836. Yet the 
 general work of the Society was by no means allowed to stand 
 still, and a more extensive work than ever was started amongst 
 the heathen of a district the Society had already once occupied, 
 that of Travancore. Madras, the eastern gate of South India, 
 had already been occupied by the Society, in 18 14; it was their 
 first station manned entirely by European missionaries. Their 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 159 
 
 work in this region acquired an influence and an importance far 
 beyond what such a comparatively small cause could otherwise 
 have exerted, owing to the distinguished missionary John 
 Tucker (1833-1847), who was at the same time local Director of 
 all the Society's work in South India. During one period the 
 Church Missionary Society had missionaries in Tranquebar 
 also, whose duties were to assist the Danish brethren. Of these, 
 the best known is Schnorre ; Rhenius was also there for a time. 
 No lasting connection, however, was formed. 
 
 Neither at this time nor for many years afterwards did 
 England send out nearly enough missionaries to man the 
 rapidly extending English missions. Germany, on the other 
 hand, had two Missionary Colleges, at Berlin and at Basle ; and, 
 whilst that of Janicke at Berlin did not send any missionaries to 
 India, the Basle College trained more candidates than they could 
 employ on their own mission field. Most of these young men 
 entered the service of English societies, and preferably that of 
 the Church Missionary Society. During the eighteenth century, 
 when both the Danish Society and the Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge had been almost exclusively carried on by 
 German Lutheran missionaries, it had been considered a matter 
 of course that such missionaries should be ordained after the 
 Lutheran fashion, and should be guided by Lutheran principles 
 both in their missionary practice and their church government. 
 They could confirm and even ordain those whom they deemed 
 suitable, and were almost independent in their work, even 
 at stations which the High Church Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge regarded as its own domain. During this 
 period no scruple was felt as to the appointment of Lutherans 
 to Anglican mission stations. But from the advent of the 
 nineteenth century Anglican churchmanship was perceptibly 
 strengthened. Friction first came about in 1818. It was 
 demanded of Lutheran clergy in the service of the Church 
 Missionary Society that they should place themselves entirely 
 under the " Corresponding Committees " in India, into whose 
 hands the Home Committee had confided the entire direction 
 of their Indian missions. This was absolutely contrary to the 
 traditions of the eighteenth century, when the Lutherans had 
 received all their instructions from Germany. By this regulation 
 they were drawn into a far more strict dependence upon the 
 English Church ; but they complied. The next step of the 
 Church Missionary Society was to insist that at all their stations 
 the Anglican form of service, i.e. the Common Prayer Book, 
 should be the standard of authority ; no candidate was to be 
 accepted for missionary work who did not bind himself to 
 observe this condition. That was a difficult demand for German 
 
i6o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Lutherans ; but they again complied. Then came the further 
 requirement that all Lutherans wishing to be accepted for service 
 under the Church Missionary Society should take Anglican 
 orders, or, if they had already taken Lutheran orders, that they 
 should be reordained. That the Anglicans attached much weight 
 to this condition is shown by the reordination of several 
 missionaries at the Danish stations, and by that of Abdul Masih. 
 And then came the additional order that the Lutheran 
 missionaries should in their general practice renounce the rights 
 which they actually possessed, rights to confirm and to ordain, 
 in favour of the prior rights of the bishops. It is perfectly 
 obvious that for men who were in any sense bound by the 
 traditions of the German Reformation it would be a much more 
 difficult matter to comply with this Anglican demand. A 
 secession like that of Rhenius was only to be expected ; and it 
 opened the eyes of many on both sides of the Channel to the 
 fact that the co-operation of Lutheran missionaries in Anglican 
 missions had become, through this development of the Anglican 
 spirit, impracticable, and that a point had been arrived at where 
 such a union was harmful to conscience. Only the fact that the 
 Basle youths had imbibed uncommonly little of the real spirit of 
 their Church will account for the union having been maintained 
 so long. And yet it was inevitable that as time went on this 
 bond, which for more than a century had united England and 
 Germany, should be loosened. The genuine sympathy with 
 which friends in Germany regarded the Church Missionary 
 Society could not alter the fact that this Society too is a 
 " Church " mission, with the clear, decided stamp of Anglicanism 
 upon it, or, as Henry Venn expresses it in his famous Remarks 
 on the Constitution and Practice of the Church Missionary 
 Society, with Reference to its Ecclesiastical Relations, "that 
 the constitution and practice of the Church Missionary Society 
 are in strict conformity with ecclesiastical principles as they 
 are recognised in the constitution and practice of the Church of 
 England." 
 
 The Wesleyans also made immediate use of the opening up 
 of India through the new Charter, although for nearly half a 
 century they limited their labours almost entirely to South India 
 and Ceylon. They began their work in the Tamil country in 
 i8i8 at Trichinopoly, and from 1821 onwards extended it to 
 Negapatam, Manargudi, Melnattam, and to the highly situated 
 and healthy city of Bangalore. In this town they commenced 
 their Kanarese Mission in 1835, in connection with which stations 
 were opened at Gubbi in the Mysore (1838), at the old 
 capital, likewise called Mysore (1838), at Tumkur, and other 
 places. In this part of India, therefore, and especially 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS i6i 
 
 in the Mysore, they thus won for themselves a leading 
 position. 
 
 As well as the English, there was no lack of Scotch 
 missionaries in India. In the year 1822 the first representatives 
 of the Scotch Missionary Society (which was taken over by the 
 Established Church of Scotland in 1835) landed in Western 
 India, and for long years sought to obtain a foothold at Poona, 
 at different places in the interior and along the Konkan coast, 
 without, however, encountering any tokens of success. The work 
 of the Scotch missionaries received its first great impetus when 
 John Wilson (1829), Alexander Duff (1830), and John Anderson 
 (1837), three of the very greatest of Indian missionaries, 
 commenced at Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras respectively those 
 missionary labours the conception of which was as magnificent 
 as their influence was far-reaching. 
 
 The change of creed on the part of the first evangelists sent 
 by the American Board, Judson and Rice, had led in 1814 to 
 the formation of the American Baptist Missionary Union, whose 
 first station was that at Rangoon, previously founded by Judson 
 in 1 813. After this mission had for more than ten years carried 
 on a difficult and unsuccessful attempt to convert the very 
 unapproachable Buddhists of Burma, a most promising door 
 was opened to it amongst the Karen Tribes in the primeval 
 forests of the, as yet, unexplored interior. New stations were 
 established at Moulmein (1827) and Tavoy (1828). The progress 
 of Baptist missions in Burma dates from the inception of the 
 Karen Mission. 
 
 The older American Mission, the American Board, enjoyed an 
 uneventful and unobtrusive existence in Bombay, principally 
 occupied with literary and educational work. As Americans 
 the few missionaries felt themselves hampered in all directions. 
 Only in the north of Ceylon, in the Jaffna district, did their work 
 meet with any success, and even there it was carried on amongst 
 an unreceptive and caste-proud people. 
 
 (f) Last Years of the Danish Mission. 1800- 1840 
 
 Once more we must return to the Danish Mission. We 
 designedly place the hour of its decline at the very time when 
 English missions began to bestir themselves ; it is this very 
 contrast which illuminates the sorrowfulness of the event. At 
 the same time, this period during which the Tamil Mission 
 flourished belongs most intimately to the history of the general 
 development of missionary work. After Christian Friedrich 
 Schwartz's death, dark days set in: the saintly Janicke had died 
 in 1790; the excellent and zealous Gericke followed him to the 
 
 IX 
 
1 62 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 grave in 1803. Whilst the experienced men of an older 
 generation passed away, there arose none like them to fill 
 the vacant places, and the few who remained were in nowise 
 able to attain to the stature of the giants who had preceded 
 them. 
 
 The peculiar strength of the mission during the eighteenth 
 century had lain in the first place in the remarkable alliance 
 subsisting between Copenhagen, Halle, and London. In spite 
 of all its ill-fortune and of many false steps, the Missionary 
 Board at Copenhagen had become the ruling partner in its 
 affairs, and friends at Halle had for the most part sent the sums 
 they had collected via Copenhagen. Copenhagen had become 
 the " Head " of the mission. But the interest which had 
 formerly been taken in the mission, especially by the Danish 
 Royal Family and the exalted society nearest the throne, had 
 long since grown cold ; the ardent hopes which had been fixed 
 on an extended trade with India had not been realised ; 
 Tranquebar was more a burden than a source of revenue. The 
 mission suffered from this lack of interest. In fact, there never 
 had been much appreciation of or enthusiasm for the further 
 development of missionary work in the English and Dutch 
 possessions and in the Native States. At the turn of the 
 eighteenth century the colony, which had hitherto been adminis- 
 tered by the Danish East India Company, became the exclusive 
 property of the crown of Denmark. This too was a change 
 wholly detrimental to the mission. The missionaries lost the 
 privilege of being the immediate proteges of the king ; the few 
 juridical functions they had hitherto exercised were taken from 
 them. The newly appointed Government officials had no 
 appreciation for the religious objects of the mission ; the 
 missionaries seemed superfluous in their eyes, and they annoyed 
 them in every possible way. And can it very much be wondered 
 at when, as early as 1776, a man like Hee Wadum was made 
 Secretary to the Danish Missionary Board — a man who was 
 graceless enough to write to one of the missionaries (John of 
 Tranquebar) : " Catholics and Jews who join our Church 
 undoubtedly take this step simply to gain some temporal 
 advantage, and I always think that the man, whoever he may 
 be, who is once untrue to his religion, can never, and should 
 never be trusted again, as I believe that such a man, given 
 favourable opportunities, would be ready barefacedly to bring 
 about changes in religion as often as he liked, and to perpetrate 
 the most insolent acts of knavery." With such opinions being 
 held by members of the governing body in Denmark, it is no 
 wonder that the Government passed a resolution in 1824 that 
 " the mission shall no longer aim at conversions, but that it 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 163 
 
 shall establish schools in which such knowledge as is profitable 
 to everybody shall be taught, in order that the right way may 
 be prepared for the true dissemination of Christianity " ! A 
 royal decree was accordingly published on May i8th, 1825, 
 which ordered that " the pastorate at the Danish Zion Church 
 shall be incorporated with the office of first missionary. The 
 religious officials, who have hitherto borne the title of 
 ' missionary ' in Tranquebar, shall only attempt to convert the 
 heathen to Christianity in places where they have good hopes 
 of success, and where the moral tone of the natives shall demand 
 it, but no public funds shall be employed for any such purposes." 
 
 Halle, on the other hand, had been the " heart " of the mission. 
 Here a true enthusiasm for their glorious calling and a knowledge 
 of its wondrous possibilities had first dawned upon the mission- 
 aries ; it was from here they had gone forth ; they regarded 
 the Francke Institute as their spiritual home. The sage spiritual 
 and missionary counsel of the two Franckes, father and son, 
 had enlightened them amid doubts and perplexities, sustained 
 them in distresses, and at all times comforted and strengthened 
 them. But with rationalism a new spirit had come over Halle : 
 the faith which works by love was dead, and a cold and super- 
 ficial intellectuality had no power to captivate the hearts of men 
 — least of all, in the interests of the difficult and self-sacrificing 
 missionary service. This shallow rationalism, too, soon made a 
 way for itself into the very ranks of the missionaries. Rev. G. H. 
 Hiittemann, who had gone out with Schwartz in 1750 and had 
 worked well during the first fifteen or twenty years, now came to 
 the conclusion that the Tranquebar Mission was nothing but a 
 great almshouse, and that the Tamils were a nation of incorrigible 
 beggars and liars. Rev. C. S. John, who had also formerly 
 been a pious Lutheran pastor, came to think it no longer 
 advisable to print passages like John iii. 16 in reading books 
 destined for the use of native children in the schools ! For 
 seventy years Ziegenbalg's old-fashioned Catechism had been in 
 use at Tranquebar, but now a new one was to be introduced, 
 based solely upon nature. Instead of printing the entire Bible 
 as hitherto, only extracts from it were to be given, in order that 
 the press might be left free for the publication of other more 
 generally useful matter ! Dr. Rottler's collection of plants and 
 John's collection of shells were renowned amongst the scholars 
 of Europe, and eight different learned societies conferred their 
 honorary membership upon both scientists. But of course 
 missionary work suffered severely by these hobbies, the country 
 districts were left to native preachers and catechists, the churches 
 were forsaken, the sacraments despised. 
 
 As for London, there had never been more than a few small 
 
1 64 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 circles which had supported the mission in India ; the Society 
 for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the organ and channel 
 by which English help had been forwarded, had no real heart for 
 the work which had unexpectedly been forced upon it. It felt 
 its true vocation to be the circulation of Christian literature, the 
 care of schools, the establishment of printing presses, etc. It was 
 an important and, in reality, a right decision when in 1826 it 
 resolved to hand over its entire South India Mission to the sister 
 organisation, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which 
 at all events desired to become a real foreign missionary society. 
 This very transference was, however, destined to be the cause of 
 far-reaching complications. The Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel has been from the very commencement the Society of 
 the extreme High Church party. With the increasing influence 
 of High Anglicanism, dating from the beginning of the century, 
 and its growing consciousness of power in English colonial and 
 missionary life, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 became the standard-bearer and the disseminator of hierarchic 
 romanising tendencies ; and a new spirit was infused into the 
 Tamil Mission, a wind from the opposite quarter, which became 
 all the more perceptible in proportion as the gentle and refreshing 
 spiritual breezes of pietism from Plalle died away. 
 
 The second element of peculiar strength in the old mission 
 had lain in its independence. Although in Tranquebar itself the 
 missionaries were under the often mean and paltry direction of 
 the Danish Board, which also owned the whole of the missionary 
 property there, yet the rest of the missionaries and stations were 
 almost entirely independent. The only tie which bound them to 
 Europe was the meagre stipend sent out from London and the 
 more or less considerable supplements to it forwarded from 
 Halle. Scarcely anybody took any interest in what they did ; 
 they rendered an account of their stewardship to no one ; the 
 stations, churches, and dwelling-houses had been built out of 
 their own private means, and they regarded them as their 
 personal property, just as all landed property was legally vested 
 in their names as private persons. If they met in conference 
 and passed rules for their common guidance, it was entirely their 
 own affair. This independence had few perils so long as it was 
 exercised by great and truly disinterested characters, who were 
 moreover all animated by a common spirit of Lutheran pietism. 
 It became a fountain of much petty strife and particularism when 
 men of inferior powers came upon the scene, and a new school 
 of thought made itself felt. 
 
 It was providential that in this transition period several 
 missionaries of very old standing were there to carry on the 
 traditions of an earlier epoch. At Madras there laboured 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 165 
 
 Patzold/ a man of incomprehensible and unreliable character 
 (1803-1817), and Rottler, pliant and weak (1803-1836); at 
 Tanjore Christian Friedrich Schwartz's adopted son, Kaspar 
 Kohlhoff ( 1 787-1 844), who was first his foster-father's greatly- 
 beloved helper, and then his successor for fifty years ; at Trichi- 
 nopoly was the ever faithful Pohle (1778-1818) ; and at Tranque- 
 bar Dr. A. F. Kammerer (1790-1837), a shallow Rationalist, who 
 was at the time of his death the last of the old Hallensian 
 missionaries. The developments which came about during the 
 lifetime of these men were not the same in Danish Tranquebar 
 as in the English stations. At Tranquebar several of the Eng- 
 lish missionary societies, such as the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel and the Church Missionary Society, made efforts 
 either to assist the tottering mission or to locate themselves 
 alongside it. But so completely had the missionary spirit 
 perished from the hearts of the Danish Mission Board that it 
 could not bring itself to allow the English to share its missionary 
 work. The farthest it would go was in 1820 to cede to the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for reasons of 
 economy, all the village causes dependent on Tranquebar, com- 
 prising the districts of eleven catechists with 1300 members and 
 eleven chapels. The Tranquebar Mission was thereby greatly 
 reduced. The two missionaries stationed there, Kammerer and 
 Schreyvogel, in 18 16 entered into a compact with the newly 
 appointed Anglican Bishop of Calcutta, Bishop Middleton, to 
 hand over their entire mission to him and to the Church he 
 represented. But the Mission Board forbade the carrying out 
 of this arrangement. Tranquebar weathered the winter with 
 difficulty as a station of the Danish Mission. 
 
 On the other stations the anglicising and anglicanising pro- 
 cess went on slowly but surely. When Patzold died at Madras 
 in 1 8 17, the only two surviving Hallensian missionaries, who 
 according to tradition, though scarcely according to the strict 
 letter of the law, could claim both the landed and the real 
 property of the Madras station, made over all this property to 
 the Madras District Committee of the Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge, and this last-named body placed the 
 aged Dr. Rottler in charge, as their own missionary. The 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge thus gained 
 an actual right of possession over one of the oldest and most 
 important missionary stations. And this right passed without 
 challenge in 1826 to the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel. Considering the distinctly High Church principles of 
 the new owners, it was only natural that they should endeavour 
 
 ^ As already mentioned in the note to p. 136, Patzold was for a time Pro- 
 fessor of Tamil at Fort William College, Calcutta. 
 
1 66 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 to promulgate their own particular views. Dr. Rottler translated 
 the Book of Common Prayer into Tamil, and introduced it to 
 his congregation. Confirmation, ordination, and the consecration 
 of churches became the exclusive privileges of the bishop. At 
 Trichinopoly and Tanjore the Lutheran liturgy, catechism, and 
 hymn-book were retained in use until 1826 and 1844 respectively ; 
 but neither Fohle at the former, nor K. Kohlhoff at the latter, 
 had either the inclination or the ability to make a definite stand 
 on behalf of the old Lutheran forms of service and church p/)lity 
 as against the new Anglican spirit. After their death the old 
 customs and rites naturally fell into abeyance, and the more so 
 because here again the deceased missionaries had left all their 
 property to the English Society unconditionally. Whether the 
 native churches had more appreciation and love for Lutheranism 
 than their missionaries possessed is a matter on which we may 
 reasonably entertain some degree of doubt. Certain it is that 
 the tenaciously conservative Tamils clung to the excellent 
 Bible of Fabricius, to the sweet hymns he had translated, to the 
 order of the Lutheran service, and to all sorts of old customs and 
 usages, good and bad. But the transition from the older period 
 to the new Anglican one had come about so gradually, and had 
 been so prudently carried through by the Anglicans as far as 
 ecclesiastical affairs were concerned, that the churches would 
 probably have become entirely reconciled to it, had not the 
 question of caste become a matter of burning strife. By 1840 
 almost all the old Hallensian mission stations were occupied by 
 English missionaries in Anglican orders. 
 
 The old Danish missionaries had treated the question of 
 caste very indulgently. With few exceptions, such as Benjamin 
 Schultze at Tranquebar (17 19-1725) and Pohle at Trichinopoly, 
 they had hesitated to grapple seriously with this deeply rooted 
 national institution, which is most intimately bound up with all 
 the manners and customs of the Tamil race. Relying on the aid 
 of the Word of God, on public and private exhortation, and on 
 their own spiritual influence, they had contented themselves with 
 an effort to destroy the evil from within. Some of vthem, and 
 especially Chr. Fr. Schwartz, had met with such signal success as 
 to be able to write, as Schwartz did in a letter dated January 
 1 791 : " As far as the high and low castes (the Sudras and the 
 Pariahs) are concerned, God hath graciously helped us so that 
 now scarcely any distinction is perceptible either in the Church 
 or at the Holy Communion. This has been done by frequent 
 loving and earnest exhortation, and we have carefully avoided 
 any kind of compulsion." And his successor in Trichinopoly, 
 K. Kohlhoff, was able in 1828 to testify that "caste distinctions 
 have until recently scarcely ever been the cause of dissension 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 167 
 
 among the converts, and gradually they have lost a great part of 
 their significance" (Handmann, Evang.-luth. Taniulen Mission, 
 p. 307). But in the churches the Sudras and the Pariahs sat 
 apart, the last-named followed the Sudras, and even the Sudra 
 women, to the Lord's Table, and the ordination of an t)therwise 
 competent and worthy catechist, Rajanaiken by name, was refused 
 solely because of his being a Pariah, as " it is not to be expected 
 that a Sudra will receive the Sacrament at his hands," and " the 
 Pariahs might thereby easily be led to regard the Sacrament 
 with contempt " (Graul, Stellwig dcr Evang.-lutJi. Mission, etc., 
 p. 41). As a matter of fact they had taken up the difficult caste 
 question all the less thoroughly because, according to Schwartz's 
 communication, two-thirds of the congregations consisted of 
 Sudras, and because the pastoral work they had already accom- 
 plished was a remarkable advance upon the lax practices of the 
 Roman Catholics. But it must be remembered that this success 
 was only attained along the lines of the most zealous and con- 
 scientious care for souls. It disappeared the moment that this 
 latter was lost sight of by a feebler and Epigonian generation. 
 Then a state of things set in which was insupportable. Bishop 
 Daniel Wilson, a stern opponent of caste we must admit, nar- 
 rates the following of which he had himself been an eye-witness : 
 " They retained the marks of heathendom upon their forehead 
 (probably he meant the Podtu, or beauty spot, which certainly 
 resembles the heathen signs on the forehead very closely; of. 
 Handmann, p. 198); heathen processions and ceremonies were 
 observed at marriages and funerals ; the degradation of the mass 
 of the congregations was as debasing as before their Christian 
 confession, — exclusion from the same division of the Church, — 
 approach to the Table of the Lord forbidden in common, 
 — reception for religious teaching into the houses of those of 
 superior caste denied, — the sponsors, except of equal caste, 
 declined, — separate spots and divisions in the burial-ground 
 imposed, — in short, the impassable barrier of Brahmanical caste 
 erected again, which condemns the one class of mankind to per- 
 petual debasement, and elevates the other to disproportionate 
 pride, — and by which all the intercommunity of the body of 
 Christ is violated and destroyed " (Westcott, Our Oldest Indian 
 Mission, p. 54). In Sandirapadi, an offshoot from Tranquebar, 
 the Christian Sudras would under no conditions allow the 
 Christian Pariahs who resided just outside the village to enter 
 their old stone chapel (Handmann, p. 312). In Madras 
 communion was administered on separate days for Sudras and 
 Pariahs (Westcott, p. 36),^ and so forth. 
 
 ^ A double communion cup, separated for Sudras and Pariahs, was in use, though 
 only for a time, at Tranquebar, but it was soon laid aside. That this slanderous 
 
1 68 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 In view of these caste complications in the native churches — 
 compHcations which continued to increase enormously — it was 
 momentous that decided opposition to caste made its way 
 everywhere in India during this new missionary period, which 
 lasted for half a century (1792- 1840), and in which English in- 
 fluence predominated. We do not hear that those missionaries 
 who led the way for all the rest, such as Carey, Marshman, 
 Duff, Wilson, Lacroix, and others, ever felt any serious 
 scruples on the question of caste. They were absolutely con- 
 vinced that caste was an institution wholly incompatible with 
 the Church of Christ, and that at any price it must be cast out of 
 the Lord's Vineyard, root and branch. It could not be other- 
 wise than that this new spirit, this new and radical fashion of 
 regarding the caste evil, should also gain adherents among 
 missionaries in the Tamil country, and that here, where the sense 
 of caste was most deeply rooted in the minds of the people, and 
 where for a century the Christian Church had treated caste with 
 a vast amount of patience, violent conflicts should arise. That 
 the carrying out of the new English caste policy should coincide 
 with the anglicanisation of the flocks of the old Danish mission- 
 aries was a fact full of moment. 
 
 Rev. C. T. Rhenius, a German missionary who had landed in 
 South India as early as 1 8 14 and who was one of the first Church 
 Missionary Society's missionaries, was a strong opponent of 
 caste. He began his work in the Black Town {i.e. native 
 quarter) of Madras in definite antagonism to it. Rev. L. P. 
 Haubroe, a Danish missionary who had been Rottler's assistant 
 under the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, was 
 influenced by Rhenius, and became the first man to attempt to 
 do away with the old caste customs among the particularly 
 sensitive Madras converts. His demands were modest enough. 
 He began by making promotions amongst the children at the 
 Christian parish school regardless of their caste — a practice 
 which now obtains almost everywhere in India as a matter of 
 course. Even this much resulted in a number of parents 
 temporarily withdrawing their children from the school ; but he 
 carried his point. Encouraged by this first success, he then 
 went a very little farther, and made the Pariah children sit in the 
 front rows at church amongst the Sudra children. This minute 
 change was sufficient to bring about a far-reaching upheaval in 
 the church at Madras. When Bishop Heber visited Madras in 
 1826, the injured congregation appealed to him to protect their 
 caste customs ; and the warm-hearted but enthusiastic Bishop, 
 
 accusation should even nowadays be flung at the old Danish missionaries, and still 
 more that it should be malevolently cast in the teeth of the Leipzig missionaries, 
 is greatly to be deplored (cf. Handmann, p. 291, note). 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 169 
 
 who, under the influence of a Tamil catechist, David, recently- 
 ordained by him, only regarded caste as a social institution of 
 the Hindus, removed Haubroe to Tanjore. In consequence of 
 this incident, Bishop Heber took a plebiscite of all South Indian 
 missionaries upon the caste question ; as most of these were 
 still guided by the traditions of the Danish Mission, the result 
 was a large majority in favour of non-interference. The sudden 
 and unexpected death of Heber at Trichinopoly on April 3rd, 
 1827, caused the matter to be for a time forgotten. 
 
 In the year 1833 it was again revived by Bishop Wilson on 
 the occasion of his visitation in South India. We may reason- 
 ably doubt whether it were prudent on his part to do this ; for 
 he judged the caste question purely from a North Indian 
 standpoint, and he was only familiar with northern conditions ; 
 and further, he was just on the point of relinquishing South 
 India to the newly created see of Madras (1833). On the 
 other hand, as Metropolitan, he was the only individual in a 
 position to give due effect to the opinions on caste which were 
 now universally held in English missionary circles. Bishop 
 Wilson took up a precisely opposite view to that of his prede- 
 cessor Heber ; he saw in caste the very stronghold of heathenism, 
 an institution which had degenerated along with Hinduism and 
 which was pre-eminently of a religious nature. In a pastoral 
 letter of July 5th, 1833, he declared: "The distinction of 
 caste must be abandoned, decidedly, immediately, and finally." 
 Caste differences were no longer to be observed in approaching 
 the Lord's Table, the appointment of catechists, the choice of 
 godparents, the permission to attend church meetings, the 
 positions of graves in the cemeteries, and so forth. And 
 whilst he desired that the missionaries should deal prudently 
 with separate cases, it was yet his unalterable will that the new 
 caste policy should be adopted, even in the congregations of 
 the old Danish Mission. He felt himself all the more bound 
 to such a course of action because the Danish congregations 
 had in the meantime come under the protection of the Society 
 for the Propagation of the Gospel, the episcopal missionary 
 society, and thereby he as Metropolitan had become their 
 paramount and responsible leader in all missionary affairs. 
 
 The publication of this energetic pastoral led to exciting 
 proceedings in the South Indian churches. In Vepery Church, 
 Madras, the whole of the Sudra Christians, as one man, left 
 the building after the letter had been read and renounced their 
 membership — a schism that was only healed after the exercise 
 of much patience and tact. In Tanjore a wild uproar arose 
 in the church immediately after the reading. Wilson relied in 
 this case on personal dealing : he reasoned long and impress- 
 
I70 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ively with the congregation. He also arranged for a celebration 
 of the Holy Communion at Trichinopoly in which, according to a 
 previously concerted plan, Sudras, Pariahs, and Englishmen were 
 to approach the Communion Table indiscriminately. But it was 
 all in vain. The majority of the native preachers and catechists 
 preferred rather to be dismissed than to comply with the 
 Bishop's orders. A mighty wave of discord swept over the old 
 pampered Congregations. They now perceived, and that from 
 a side on which they were most sensitive, that a new spirit had 
 taken possession of the leaders of the missionary enterprise. 
 
 More than a decade passed by before the English missionary 
 authorities took further steps towards abolishing the caste evil. 
 Decided action was brought about in 1847 by the frank and 
 resolute testimonies of Anderson's converts at Madras, who 
 were all educated young men of the highest caste. The 
 missionaries now came to the conclusion that, once and for all, 
 cost what it might, the opposition between Sudras and Pariahs 
 within the Church must be put an end to. To this end they 
 determined to launch out in a radically new direction : the 
 Christians were to prove at common " love-feasts " that they 
 had become one body in Christ Jesus. Especially for native 
 workers of every kind, and in particular for pastors and 
 catechists, was this frequently renewed comradeship around 
 one common board made an indispensable condition of their 
 being employed by the mission. The American Congrega- 
 tionalists (the American Board) at Madura took the lead. In 
 1847 they promoted several so-called "test meals." The 
 consequence was a grave crisis for this Society : seventy-two 
 persons, thirty-eight of whom were catechists (!) were suspended. 
 In the Pasumalai Seminary, near Madras, practically the whole 
 of the teachers and scholars were sent home. In many cases 
 people from the very lowest classes replaced the teachers who 
 had left ; and this did not contribute by any means to the 
 uplifting of the native churches. 
 
 In spite of these lamentable experiences, the Madras Mission- 
 ary Conference of 1848 went yet a step farther, and determined 
 that from that time onwards no one should be baptized who 
 did not break caste and partake of food prepared by a Pariah. 
 In February 1850 this Conference issued a strong manifesto 
 against caste, the " Minute of the Madras Missionary Confer- 
 ence," which clearly defined its own position, and which was 
 principally aimed at the methods of the missionaries of 
 the Leipzig Society, who favoured less radical proceedings. 
 The Foreign Secretary of the American Board, Rufus Anderson, 
 when on a missionary tour in 1854 through the northern parts 
 of Ceylon, where the caste spirit is especially strong, induced 
 
DEVELOPMENT OP PROTESTANT MISSIONS 171 
 
 ninety of the most respected members of the native churches 
 in connection with the American Board to draw up a declaration 
 by which they pledged themselves, " as far as they them- 
 selves were concerned, to give up all caste distinctions and 
 social usages, and also to discountenance such ideas in other 
 people, as they only serve to nourish pride, to bias affection, 
 and to restrain the dictates of Christian kindliness and love." 
 Since that time the caste question has never been omitted from 
 the proceedings of the South India Missionary Conferences, 
 and no modification has ever been made in the fundamental 
 principle of absolute breaking of caste by members of the 
 Christian community and its extermination by all lawful means. 
 This is expressed with particular precision in a resolution 
 of the Bangalore Missionary Conference (June 1879): "The 
 Conference does not hold caste to be in its theory and practice 
 a mere civil class distinction but rather, and to an overwhelming 
 extent, a purely religious institution. Looked at in this light, 
 it is diametrically opposed to the Christian doctrine of the 
 unity of mankind and of the brotherhood of all true Christians. 
 It is therefore the duty of all missionaries and societies to 
 demand an absolute renunciation of caste and all its outward 
 manifestations from those who desire to be received into the 
 Church of Christ." As the years have gone by, more attention 
 has been given to phraseology. In leaving this part of our 
 subject for the present, we may cite as an expression of modern 
 feeling on the subject the vote of the South India Missionary 
 Conference of 1900, which was also ratified by the General 
 Missionary Conference of 1902 (we give the later form): "The 
 Conference would earnestly emphasise the deliverance of the 
 South India Missionary Conference of 1900, viz., that 
 caste, wherever it exists in the Church, be treated as a great 
 evil to be discouraged and repressed. It is further of opinion 
 that in no case should any person who breaks the law of Christ 
 by observing caste hold any office in connection with the 
 Church, and it earnestly appeals to all Indian Christians to use 
 all lawful means to eradicate so unchristian a system." 
 
 What have been the practical results of this decisive and 
 consistent policy? In the first place, it has here and there led 
 without doubt to arbitrary proceedings and hard dealing, to 
 hypocrisy and dishonesty ; for Christians of long standing and 
 of higher castes conformed only outwardly to the clearly 
 expressed will of those placed in authority — it would have 
 needed more character than the average Hindu possesses to with- 
 stand this temptation. And the lower caste Christians of Pariah 
 descent commended themselves to their superiors by punctiliously 
 oberving the external signs of a complete break with caste in 
 
172 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 order to place themselves in as favourable a light as possible, to 
 ensure their own advancement and obtain a higher salary, or 
 any other advantages. But the results of the poHcy were both 
 broader and deeper than this. Within the Christian community 
 the Sudra and Pariah castes, hitherto separated by a yawning 
 gulf, were drawn nearer together ; there ensued a certain inter- 
 blending of the two — though certainly this is far from being, 
 even yet, an accomplished fact ; inter-marriages even took 
 place, and in consequence of these mixed families of Sudras and 
 Pariahs are not uncommon. It is not true to say that the 
 general result has been to thereby lower the Sudras to the 
 level of the Pariahs ; on the contrary, it is perhaps the Pariah 
 Christians who have the more frequently and to a greater degree 
 been uplifted and developed in culture, cleanliness, good 
 manners, and moral character. But we cannot deny that in 
 spite of all its successes up to the present time this inter-blending 
 will for a long time have to be a subject of the most delicate 
 and constant consideration if its eventual result is not to be the 
 proletariatising of missionary work. It is important to notice 
 that through this treatment of the caste question the ev^angelical 
 churches have, for the present and for a considerable time 
 to come, lost their attraction for natives of the higher 
 caste, who may have felt inclined to enter into member- 
 ship with them. The Sudra knows that he must forfeit his 
 rank and social position when he becomes a Christian, and 
 although it is a wicked exaggeration to tell him that as a 
 Christian he will become a Pariah and an "outcaste," he has 
 nevertheless to step out of the old order of society, which was 
 dominated in every direction by the caste system, and to enter 
 that Christian society to which he is a complete stranger, w^hich 
 lies entirely outside of his old world, and whose social standing, 
 whilst it has been slowly raised during the course of the last 
 century, has still much ground to make up. At the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century this abnormal condition of things existed 
 in the Tamil country : that when any one became a Muham- 
 madan he rose considerably in the social scale, and attained 
 a respectable standing civilly ; whereas any one who became a 
 Christian sank into a bottomless abyss. Only gradually, as a 
 result of their increasing spiritual power, their prosperity, and 
 the growing reputation of missions, has the social position of 
 the Christian section of the community been elevated. The 
 immediate consequence of the new definite caste policy was 
 that the Sudra classes assumed a more determined attitude of 
 reserve towards missionary work than they had done in the 
 eighteenth century. Whereas in Schwartz's time the Sudra 
 Christians were in the majority in the Church, it now became a 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF FROTESTANT MISSIONS 173 
 
 much rarer occurrence for a Sudra to change his faith. On the 
 other hand, the Pariahs gradually waked up and began audibly to 
 knock at the doors of the Church for admission. The relations 
 between Sudras and Pariahs in the evangelical churches have in 
 the course of the century turned more and more to the disadvan- 
 tage of the former, and at the present time the Pariahs tend in 
 ever increasing proportions to form an overwhelming majority. 
 The change in caste policy, whilst not the only one, has yet 
 been a very powerful factor in bringing about this condition of 
 affairs. \ 
 
 It must notbesupposed, however, that thdrejormed missionary 
 societies have been in favour of the sternter policy, whilst the 
 Lutheran societies have in general adopted an opposite and 
 more tolerant one, nor that the Anglo-American missions have 
 declared for the one and the German and Continental missions 
 for the other. It would be far nearer the mark to state that the 
 Leipzig Missionary Society stands practically alone on the side 
 of a sufferance of caste, while on the other side is arrayed the 
 almost unanimous consensus of opinion of all the other societies, 
 and it is just such German societies as those of Basle and of 
 Hermannsburg and such Lutheran societies as the Danish and 
 those of the General Council and General Synod,^ which advocate 
 the standpoint of opposition to all caste with the greatest 
 firmness. 
 
 The question of caste was the cause of specially painful 
 events on the occasion of the founding of the Leipzig Mission 
 in South India. We shall, how^ever, treat of those disputes to 
 better purpose in the course of our proposed special history of 
 Tamil missions. 
 
 2, The Age of Alexander Duff (1830- 1857) 
 
 (a) Alexander Duff and his Work 
 
 The second period of missionary work in India is best 
 introduced by the figure of Dr. Alexander Duff, whose far- 
 reaching labours left a deeper mark upon it than was made by 
 any other missionary. When Dr. Duff, then only twenty-one 
 years old, arrived at Calcutta in 1830, after a voyage lasting 
 seven months, and interrupted by two dangerous shipwrecks, 
 the great movement which had been produced by the operations 
 
 ^ The Hermannsburg Missionary Society was founded by the Lutheran pastor, 
 Louis Harms, at Hermannsburg, in the province of Hanover. The General Council 
 and General Synod are two Lutheran Churches in the United States of America 
 which possess missions of their own in the Telugu country. 
 
174 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 of the Serampore Trio had practically come to a standstill, and 
 though there still remained a number of zealous and able mission- 
 aries in Calcutta and the neighbourhood, neither their methods 
 nor the success they met with commended themselves to the highly 
 gifted Scot. He at once got the impression that missionary 
 work had so to speak reached a cjU de sac in which further 
 progress was barred. The congregations gathered by the 
 preaching of the missionaries were everywhere small. Further- 
 more, it was a veritable disaster that the only candidates for 
 baptism in North India were, with few exceptions, poor down- 
 trodden individuals belonging to the lowest castes, and that 
 these persons henceforward remained pecuniarily dependent on 
 the missions they joined, and thus made no advance towards 
 true moral or religious independence. The Christian com- 
 munity exercised a repellent rather than an attractive influence 
 upon its Hindu neighbours, and was more of a hindrance than a 
 help to missionary progress. Duff therefore asked himself the 
 question, "Is there then no possible way of getting into touch 
 with the influential classes, the upper castes of India?" 
 
 In the years immediately preceding Duffs arrival (i 824-1 826) 
 missionary circles in India had been warmly interested in a big 
 scheme, which had been drafted in South India by two very keen 
 but not very wise young missionaries of the London Society, 
 Drs. Massie and Laidler. They wanted to found in Bangalore, 
 a high and healthy station, but at that time at some distance 
 from the great Indian trade routes, an "Anglo-Indian Univer- 
 sity," with English professors to give instruction in all the 
 Western sciences and learned pundits to teach Sanskrit and 
 Indian subjects. This great project, which had not, however, 
 been maturely worked out either from a technical or from a 
 missionary standpoint, had failed owing to the opposition of 
 the Directors of the London Missionary Society and the 
 inconsistency of its promoters. Duff's homeland had been 
 from time immemorial the El Dorado of higher education ; 
 the circles in which he and his friends moved had always 
 looked upon missions as a kind of educational work : to found 
 schools and colleges for the dissemination of Christian culture 
 in India had been the purport of the first missionary resolution 
 of the Scotch General Assembly in 1825. Hence Duff firmly 
 made up his mind within a few weeks of his arrival in India 
 that the new line of missionaiy work which he was destined to 
 strike out was to bring the youth of India under Christian 
 influences by means of schools. Note Avell, his idea was not 
 schools for the children of Christian parents ; the duty of 
 educating the younger generation of the Christian community 
 in the spirit of Christ has ever been one of the most obvious 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 175 
 
 duties of Protestant missions. Duff's plan was to create 
 schools for the children of heathen parents, that the schools 
 themselves might be the instruments of pioneer missionary- 
 work. In this way he hoped to gain three ends. Education, 
 and particularly higher education, is in the civilised lands of 
 the East a prerogative of the highest classes. If Duff could 
 succeed in making his schools popular, he would thereby gain 
 entrance to the first circles of society in the' country — and that 
 seemed to him desirable, not only because all the methods 
 hitherto adopted by the different missions had failed to gain 
 such access, but also those very classes were in India the 
 privileged leaders of society, the sole possessors of higher 
 culture and of an already developed intellectual life. Secondly, 
 he could confidently expect from his higher education the wide 
 dissemination of a general knowledge of Christianity and 
 Christian views of life. Christianity would become a centre 
 of public interest, and, at the same time, a matter of universal 
 concern ; in this way it would prove itself the mightiest spiritual 
 force in existence, and capable of entering into ghostly conflict 
 with the ancient Indian spirit world and its ideals. Thirdly, 
 Duff expected with believing faith that from his schools there 
 would grow up, if not a numerous, yet for that very reason a 
 more brilliant, body of truly converted young men, all of them 
 belonging to the very best families and equipped with a complete 
 Western and Christian education. A contingent of Christians 
 of this calibre seemed to him the more " devoutly to be wished " 
 because of the humble origin of the majority of Christians of 
 that time. 
 
 But how was Duff to make specifically Christian schools 
 aiming at such high missionary goals so popular that the 
 elite of the youth of India should flock thither, so popular that 
 they should become a great power in the life of the heathen 
 masses ? The high schools of the Brahmans and Muhammadans 
 were on the decline during the first thirty years of the last 
 century, and the tols, or Brahmanical seminaries, at Benares, 
 Ajodhya, and Nuddea retained hardly a gleam of their old 
 splendour, and could only point to a very small number of 
 Sanskrit-speaking teachers and scholars. British administra- 
 tion had at first, in conformity with the views still prevalent 
 in England, left educational matters entirely outside its 
 purview. When, towards the end of the eighteenth century, 
 it began to concern itself in the matter, it saw in this neutral 
 and, as far as it was concerned, indifferent ground a suitable 
 sphere for the performance of small favours towards the subject 
 peoples. Thus in 1781 a " madrissa," or College, was built for the 
 Muhammadans of Calcutta; in 1791 a Sanskrit College was 
 
176 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 founded at Benares; in 1824 a College for Hindus was taken 
 over (which had been erected in Calcutta by private subscription 
 in 1 8 17). At the beginning of the nineteenth century traces of 
 definite principle first found their way into the Government's 
 education policy. At that time the marvellous faery world of 
 the Orient was opening up to scholars, and the magnificent 
 Sanskrit language and the rich Sanskrit literature was being 
 unlocked to mankind. Orientalists were enchanted with this 
 new domain. It seemed to them in the highest degree desirable 
 that their discovery of this old world of culture should produce 
 in India an intellectual Renaissance. The large sums of money 
 which the Charter of 181 3 placed at their disposal for scientific 
 and scholastic purposes they spent solely in the pursuit of such 
 old classical studies. In the newly founded School of Medicine 
 at Calcutta the Sanskrit treatises of Charaka and Susruta were 
 studied, in the Muhammadan "madrissa" the medical writings 
 of Avicenna, and from these long-forgotten and out-dated works 
 costly school editions were prepared. The enthusiasts for 
 things Oriental possessed the ear of the Government, at whose 
 cost alone they were able to carry on this original research. 
 
 Along with these one-sided antiquarians, a second and more 
 modest movement could be discerned, that of the vernacularists. 
 They emphasised the claims of the living languages of the 
 country, and strove to assert their right to serve as the bases of all 
 educational training. The missionaries were the first to learn 
 the various vernaculars, in many cases the first to reduce them 
 to writing and to lay the foundations of a future literature. 
 They were one and all predisposed to favour the vernacular, 
 which was indispensable at every turn in missionary work. 
 But the statesmen of India too, in the midst of this Babel of 
 tongues, felt the urgent necessity of making one language the 
 language of the Government, and establishing it as the lingua 
 franca of their domain. Taking example by the Muhammadans, 
 who for four hundred years had made Hindustani or Urdu the 
 language of the State and of the Bench, they did not hesitate to 
 follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. They specially 
 favoured the Persian tongue, as being a supposedly more elegant 
 if more noble language for courts of justice — in this again 
 resembling their Moghul predecessors. They found themselves, 
 however, confronted with the great question as to whether they, 
 the English lords of the land, should also learn Urdu, speak 
 Urdu, and write Urdu — much as the Dutch in the Indian 
 Archipelago had made the Malay tongue the organ of their 
 official proceedings. Englishmen have never had either a great 
 liking or an innate talent for learning foreign languages. They 
 are born into the world with the idea that English is the tongue 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTAxNT MISSIONS 177 
 
 of universal culture and that every other, especially every 
 Indian dialect, is inferior to it; so that whilst one may out of 
 condescension or for political purposes make use of them, it 
 would be quite below their dignity to use them in ordinary 
 conversation. This idea prevented the vernacularists from 
 gaining their point. To give the Hindus a solid education in 
 the vernacular just for the sake of the training and the intel- 
 lectual uplifting of the natives was an idea which never presented 
 itself to their English lords, and the latter cleared themselves in 
 their own eyes by declaring that the modern languages of India 
 were in such a state of confusion that not one of them could be 
 regarded as a fit instrument for imparting higher education ; 
 they must attain a certain degree of maturity and intellectual 
 capacity before they could be the agents for the culture of the 
 Christian West. 
 
 It was here that Duff struck out in an entirely new direction. 
 In direct opposition to public opinion, and even to the painful 
 surprise of other Bengal missionaries — with the exception of the 
 aged Carey — he resolved to make the English language the vehicle 
 for the new civilisation and culture. Duff was of Gaelic descent; 
 he was guided by the experience of his own more limited father- 
 land : just as the Gaelic-speaking country population of Scotland 
 is linked by means of the English language with the great civilised 
 world and is permanently influenced by it, so English was to be 
 to Bengal, to all India, the channel for the Christian learning of 
 the Western world. Duff expected that the people of India 
 would be vitalised by the powerful stream of this new learning, 
 communicated to them by means of the English language, to 
 the same extent that his own fellow-countrymen had ever been. 
 He determined further that, as it was beyond doubt that the 
 English would retain their own language, it would be absolutely 
 necessary for the Indians to learn English. The knowledge of 
 English, which would slowly work its way farther and farther 
 afield, would have to be peremptorily demanded from all who 
 were in the employ of the Government. To make English the 
 language of universal trade was undoubtedly the aim of the 
 English commercial world. The thorough cultivation of English 
 in India must therefore have a great future. The only question 
 was whether those castes and classes of India which had 
 hitherto given the lead in matters intellectual would hold 
 themselves coldly aloof from English, or whether for the sake 
 of the ever increasing material advantages which would accrue 
 from a knowledge of it, they would welcome it. For this reason 
 it was of importance that Duff should make his experiment in 
 Calcutta, the intellectual centre of the most intelligent and 
 susceptible race in India. Here he met with such unqualified 
 
t;^ HISTORY OF LNDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 success within a very few years that his example became 
 of the most radical importance in the later development of the 
 Indian educational system. 
 
 Duff opened his new school on July 13th, 1830. Ram Mohan 
 Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj, and perhaps the only 
 Hindu of that day who had obtained a thorough English 
 education, and who had thereby been brought so much the 
 nearer to Christianity, was his helper in the bold undertaking. 
 The attempt succeeded beyond all expectation. It was demon- 
 strated that there existed a simply insatiable hunger for a 
 knowledge of English amongst the younger generation of the 
 better classes in Calcutta, When at the end of the first school 
 year Duff showed, by means of a public examination, what 
 progress the students had made in that short space of time, 
 public opinion veered completely round in his favour. At the 
 same time Duff gave the Bible and Christian teaching such a 
 peculiar and commanding place in his school programme that 
 ere long permanently Christian influences were radiating from 
 his highly spiritual personality. As soon as this became 
 apparent, through the frank testimony of the scholars, through 
 their conversion or especially through their baptism, a rumour 
 of it was quickly spread through Calcutta, and the cry went 
 up, " Hinduism is in danger." Then Duff's school was emptied 
 at one stroke, and writ large in the Hindu newspapers appeared 
 the menace, " Whoever sends his children to this school will be 
 driven out of his caste." Yet before a week had gone by the 
 school was again filled to the very last place ! With a few 
 interruptions Duff remained in Calcutta nearly a third of a 
 century (1830-35, 1839-50, 1856-63). (Of his profoundly 
 stirring pioneer work in the development of a missionary spirit 
 in Scotland we cannot here give any account.) He thus had 
 time to thoroughly work out his educational plans, and when 
 compelled to give up his first missionary premises to the 
 Established Church in consequence of the Disruption in the 
 Scottish Church (1843) ^^^d his own adhesion to the recently 
 established Free Church, he was able to found in Neemtola 
 Street, Calcutta, another imposing institution. 
 
 We cannot follow up Duff's labours in detail ; it is more 
 important for us to review the effects produced by them. 
 These are, in the main, four. The inrush of Western culture 
 into India had the immediate result of shattering of the 
 Hindu conceptions of life, and turning into objects of ridicule 
 its curious ideas of the world and the elementary forces of 
 nature. So far as Western science had up to that time been 
 taught, as for instance at the already mentioned Hindu College, 
 or through the writings of English deists and atheists brought 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 179 
 
 into the country by unscrupulous booksellers, it had conducted 
 the Hindu, thirsty for knowledge but without judgment, into 
 paths of unbelief and materialism. It was the merit of Duff 
 and those who soon rallied to his side that they proved 
 before the eyes of all India, convincingly and with great force 
 of intellect, that the West had not only this barren materialism 
 to offer India, but rather a conception of life resting upon 
 idealistic principles, and finding in the Bible the highest truth 
 and the noblest morality. Competent witnesses and con- 
 temporaries testify to the fact that so long as Duff remained 
 in the mission field, and especially up to the Mutiny in 1857, 
 the Christian presentation of life at any rate held its own 
 against that stream of non-religious culture which was then 
 unfortunately rushing in upon India, even when it did not 
 completely turn it back. 
 
 Further, Duff's influence was of great importance in the 
 after development of the Indian school system. Nothing but 
 the fact that such a far-seeing man as Lord Bentinck was 
 at that time Governor-General, and that his chief adviser was 
 the pious and sensible Sir Chas. Trevelyan, enabled Duff to 
 render such service in those early years. Only five years after 
 his school had been opened, Duff had the triumph of seeing 
 the existing educational policy of the administration thrown 
 to the winds, and a new policy of reform based on his own 
 ideas adopted. 
 
 On March 7th of that year, 1835, a Minute of the Govern- 
 ment was published, according to which it became the aim of 
 the Government to naturalise European literature and science 
 in India, and that all available funds should be used solely for 
 the fostering of English culture ; the schools which had hitherto 
 been supported, or partially supported by the Government, and 
 which the antiquarian hobbies of the Orientalists had artfully 
 kept open, should one by one drop out. Also the School of 
 Medicine established in Calcutta in 1822, which had up to the 
 present tormented itself with the old Sanskrit text-books, was 
 closed, and in 1835 replaced by a Medical College on European 
 lines, in which the dissection of the bodies of both men and 
 animals, so abhorrent to the Brahmans, became one of the most 
 carefully fostered branches of science. 
 
 That was the first definite step taken by the English 
 Government along the new path marked out by Duff. It was 
 but a case of cause and effect when nine years later the Governor- 
 General, Sir H. Hardinge, published a further order (October 
 1844) to the effect that, as education in English had made 
 such great progress in Bengal since the Minute of 1835, the 
 entire Indian civil service (with the exception of the 750 highest 
 
i8o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 positions or thereabouts, the so-called " covenanted service," in 
 which monster salaries were obtained and which the English 
 reserved for themselves) was to be thrown open to English- 
 speaking Indians without distinction of race or creed, and at 
 the commencement of each year the Government schools and 
 the mission schools were to furnish a list of those persons 
 eligible to enter the service of the State. Even in the lowest 
 posts a candidate who could read and write was to be chosen 
 in preference to an illiterate. Of course, between the publica- 
 tion of such a philanthropic Minute and its being regularly 
 carried out was a far cry. As a matter of fact, until the 
 revolt of 1857 all the higher offices and posts both in the 
 civil and military services remained closed to natives, and still 
 more so to Christians ; and discontent at this retrogressive 
 policy was one of the leading reasons for the ever growing 
 unrest. That such a decree should be enforced had also been 
 one of the demands on the occasion of the renewal of the 
 Charter in 1833 — unfortunately, in vain. 
 
 Also in connection with the second definite move in the 
 new Indian educational policy, the famous " Educational 
 Dispatch "of Sir Chas. Wood (later Lord Halifax) on July 19th, 
 1854,^ Duff exercised, along with his distinguished friend Sir 
 Chas. Trevelyan, a definite influence. When the protracted 
 and complicated negotiations anterior to the last renewal of the 
 East India Charter were going on in 1852, Duff was in England, 
 and he was accepted, even in Government circles, as a supreme 
 authority on Indian affairs. Frequently consulted upon this 
 question, he threw the whole weight of his personality into the 
 balance in order that this Magna Charta of Indian education 
 might pass into law. The Dispatch brought with it a necessity 
 for the most far-reaching reorganisation. To begin with, in 
 each of the Indian Presidencies a " Department of Public Instruc- 
 tion " was formed with control over the whole of the educa- 
 tional system of that particular Presidency. Then three Indian 
 Universities were created on the model of the University of 
 London, i.c. simply as centres of intellectual life and as exam- 
 ining bodies. These were erected at Calcutta, Bombay, and 
 Madras in 1857 — a fourth University was founded at Lahore in 
 1882 for the Punjab, and a fifth for the United Provinces at 
 Allahabad in the year 1887. To these Universities all colleges 
 and high schools were to be affiliated, in order to obtain for their 
 students rights of entrance to the higher or lower branches of 
 the Civil Service, and permission to take the necessary examina- 
 tions. Thirdly, a most elaborate system of support for the whole 
 
 ^ It comprises eighteen folio pages in the Blue Book ; it was drafted by a future 
 Viceroy of India, Lord Northbrook. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS i8i 
 
 of education was inaugurated, the so-called " grant-in-aid " 
 system ; that is, the Government declared its readiness to 
 support according to a fixed scale any school, no matter by 
 whom established or how directed, providing it complied with 
 certain conditions as to school premises and teaching staff, and as 
 to a certain amount of instruction in prescribed subjects, religion 
 alone excepted.^ The Government therewith declared its 
 
 ^ The Indian educational system, as developed under this system of grants, is not 
 homogeneous in the spheres of the five Universities ; likewise the amount of the grant 
 and the designation of the different grades varies, and there are many deviations both 
 in the mode of teaching and in the ideals aimed at by the teaching. The school 
 system of the Madras Presidency may serve as a paradigm. We must say a few 
 words about this, because in the reports of Indian mission schools there occur 
 certain technical expressions which are only to be understood in this connection. 
 The idea of the school unit lies at the basis of the whole educational structure. In 
 Bengal it is the more advanced school which is the unit, in South India the lower- 
 class school, in other provinces combinations of both. The whole school-ladder 
 mounts by fourteen grades, most of which are courses of one year's duration. The 
 first four correspond to the classes of elementary schools, the next six to those of 
 English grammar schools, and the last four are the classes for University examina- 
 tions. Within such limits the four lowest classes are reckoned as Standards I. to IV., 
 the next, the middle classes, are termed Forms I., II., and III., or Standards V, to VII. 
 The elementary classes taken as a whole are called the Primary Department, the 
 three lower middle classes of the Lower Secondary or Middle Department are called 
 the "Middle School," this being qualified by the terms "Middle English" or 
 " Middle Vernacular," according as instruction in English or in native languages is 
 emphasised in the curriculum. The three upper middle classes are almost universally 
 named the " High School." Of the four academic classes the two first prepare for 
 the examination termed "First in Arts" (F.A.), the two others for the "Bachelor 
 of Arts" (B.A.) ; as a rule, the actual courses of instruction cease at this point. But 
 a third course of two years' duration is often added, in preparation for the highest 
 academic examination, that of " Master of Arts " (M.A. ) ; this final course is mostly 
 prepared for by private study, but in Bengal teaching is also given for these closing 
 terms. These six years of advanced study compose the " College " in the technical 
 sense of the term, and are the completion of the whole educational system. Pro- 
 motion from one grade to another, i.e. from the Primary to the Middle School, from 
 that to the High School, and from that again to the College, and also to the three 
 degrees (of F.A., B.A., and M.A.), is by means of public examinations. These 
 are for the most part conducted by the University, and are nearly all written and 
 not oral. 
 
 In order to assess the annual grant, and to supervise the carrying out of the 
 necessary regulations, a Board of Education is established in each province, having 
 at its head a "Director of Public Instruction." A number of male and female 
 inspectors are placed under the direction of this Board, whose duties are to examine 
 every school and every class annually in order to be able to determine the grant, 
 having due regard to the number of scholars and the standard of their attainments. 
 The examinations for promotion conducted by the University and those for the 
 apportioning of grants held by the inspectors of schools are carried on side by side 
 but independently. 
 
 The qualifications for liigher and lower positions in the Civil Service, for entrance 
 to Government colleges for special branches of study, to the Teachers' Training 
 Colleges, etc., differ in the various provinces, but they always depend closely upon 
 the above-mentioned examinations. Just as here in Germany the " Einjahrigen " 
 and " Abiturienten " examinations (Translator's Note. — The " Einjahrigen " examina- 
 tion excuses one year's military service, the "Abiturienten" is the "Leaving 
 Certificate " of a Gymnasium) confer status and open up the way for those who have 
 passed them, so in India do all these examinations conducted by the Universities ; 
 the gap between the Primary and the Secondary grades is even bridged over by 
 
1 82 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 resolve to withdraw from direct participation in higher educa- 
 tion, to let its more advanced public schools gradually drop 
 out of existence, and to place the high schools in the hands of 
 State-aided societies and public bodies — amongst which the 
 missionary societies took a leading position. 
 
 Finally, the Government declared its readiness and its 
 determination to found model schools in each district, and more 
 especially to found colleges for special branches of study, such 
 as law, medicine, art, etc. Duffs biographer, George Smith, 
 says truly that had Duff done nothing more than influence and 
 shape according to his mind Indian legislation on behalf of 
 schools, from the time of Lord Bentinck down to this Educational 
 Dispatch, that alone would have sufficed to procure him the 
 lasting indebtedness of India (G. Smith, Life of Alexander Duff, 
 4th edit. p. 266), 
 
 The Educational Dispatch, and especially the grant-in-aid 
 system, became of cardinal importance to Indian education, and 
 can only be described as a stroke of genius. It united the 
 slumbering powers of missions, communities, Indian princes and 
 private individuals in the common task of instructing the people, 
 and made it possible for the Government to exercise such a 
 measure of supervision over their efforts as was necessary at the 
 initiation of so novel a regime. As the zeal for knowledge in- 
 creased among the Indian people it allowed of a wide extension 
 of the school system even to the remotest districts, without 
 involving the Government in any further educational responsi- 
 bilities than the appointment of a few more inspectors of 
 schools. And by means of scholarships judiciously awarded it 
 became possible to stimulate the scholars' desire for learning 
 and also to open up a way by which a poor man's children 
 might enjoy a University education. For missions too this 
 grant-in-aid system was of great importance. Whereas formerly, 
 in spite of the benevolent decrees of a Bentinck or a Hardinge, 
 the Government had been loth to grant financial aid to mission 
 schools, missions now had the additional claim of a legal right.^ 
 And as missionaries like Dr. Duff had had a distinct influence 
 in the shaping of the famous Dispatch, it was perfectly clear 
 that the main tendency of the new grant-in-aid system was to 
 encourage the various missions to engage in the very congenial 
 
 them. This system of the educational ladder plays an important part in the modern 
 life of the lower classes of India. 
 
 ^ The very smallest amount of money possible had been hitherto spent for educa- 
 tional purposes, and of the few funds available for the purpose the missionary 
 societies received nothing. Furthermore the Court of Directors immediately sought 
 to annul the clauses which worked so very favourably towards missions, by enacting 
 that missionary schools should receive no grant. Their rule, however, came to an 
 end in 1857, and Sir Chas. Wood's Educational Dispatch remained. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 183 
 
 work of elementary education to a larger extent than ever 
 before.^ 
 
 There still remain two directions in which we must trace 
 the profound influence of Duff's life-work. His example incited 
 very many to tread in his steps ; the way he had taken was 
 trodden, with varied success but to an ever increasing extent, 
 both by other missionaries of his own Church and also by other 
 missionary societies. Duff has for ever secured a place for the 
 mission school among the missionary methods of India. 
 
 Especially did Duff, one of its first and most renowned 
 missionaries, imprint his personality on the missions of the Free 
 Church of Scotland; even to-day in India that Church is the 
 " educational " mission par excellaice. The most splendid 
 memorial of Duff's sojourn in India, and especially of the 
 period before 1857, is his brilliant development of the mission 
 school system: the quarter-century 1830-1857 is the age of 
 the mission school. During that period the Government — in 
 spite of the good intentions of Bentinck — lay really in an 
 apathy which we find it hard to understand ; for three years 
 Lord Ellenborough was Governor-General, a man who regarded 
 the political ruin of the English power as the inevitable 
 consequence of the education of the Hindus ! Hence at that 
 time the mission school exercised a dominating influence over 
 Indian thought which it is difficult to estimate nowadays. In 
 Bombay Dr. John Wilson (after Duff the most brilliant Scotch 
 missionary of the day) founded the magnificent College which 
 afterwards bore his name. At Madras Anderson and Braid- 
 wood opened the General Assembly's School in 1837, which, under 
 the genial direction of Dr. Miller, the most famous educational 
 missionary alive, has become the " Christian College." At 
 Nagpur, in Central India, Stephen Hislop opened in 1844 
 
 ^ The Government had hitherto neglected elementary education in a most irre- 
 sponsible way. In 1834 Lord W. Bentinck had set on foot a general inquiry in 
 Bengal, in order to ascertain what was being done in this direction ; the result was 
 that more than ninety-two per cent, of the population which was of an age to attend 
 school never set foot therein. And this report had been accepted without demur ! 
 However inadequate mission schools were even in 1852, on account of the 
 relatively small dimensions of missionary work, they at any rate contained four times 
 as many children as the Government schools. All the Government schools together 
 had only twelve thousand scholars in 1854 ! The devout Lieutenant-Governor of the 
 United Provinces, James Thomason (from 1844) was the first to found elementary 
 schools on any systematic plan. He has been called, with a shade of exaggeration, the 
 " Father of Elementary Education in India " ! He endeavoured whenever possible to 
 work in close connection with the already existing village schools (Patashala). Duff 
 and his friends would like to have seen the Dispatch definitely declare the Bible to be a 
 text-book in every Government school. They were only able, however, to get the 
 hitherto partially prevailing custom made into an order, that a copy of the Bible be 
 placed in every school library, and that every teacher should have the right to read 
 it out of the regular school-hours with any pupil who should express a desire for such 
 instruction. 
 
1 84 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the fourth of his Society's colleges. In 1853 the Church 
 Missionary Society founded St. John's College at Agra, the 
 first principal of which was the future Bishop French; in 1841 
 Robert Noble opened the " Noble " College at Masulipatam. 
 These were the most famous of the colleges which were erected 
 in rapid succession in the most widely separated parts of the 
 country under the direct influence and inspiration of Duff, to 
 say nothing of other colleges like those built at Calcutta, 
 Madras, and Bombay by the National Church of Scotland 
 after the Disruption. 
 
 Especially dear to Dr. Duff's heart were the direct results of 
 his own educational work, the conversion of young men of 
 brilliant gifts, wide scholarship, and unmistakable religious 
 sincerity, from the highest classes of Hindu society. Such cases 
 did not abound. Duff's biographer, taking converted families 
 as his unit, only mentions twenty-six of them. But what 
 remarkable personalities, what pillars in the Indian Church, are 
 included in that small number! Krishna Mohan Banerjea, 
 Gopinath Nundy, Mohesh Chunder Ghose, Anando Chunder 
 Mozumdar, and Lai Behari Day are the glittering stars in the 
 firmament of the Indian Christian world. It was something 
 wholly new for North India no longerto see orphan children picked 
 up anywhere, outcastes, beggars and cripples becoming members 
 of the Christian Church, but in their stead scions of the noblest 
 houses. Almost all the aristocratic families of Calcutta were 
 represented amongst the converts, the Mukerjeas, Banerjeas 
 and Chakarbuttys, the Ghoses, Mozumdars and Dutts, the 
 Sirkars, the Naths, the Gangulis. The present writer, whilst at 
 Calcutta, had an opportunity of conversing with several members 
 of these distinguished families, both Christian and heathen, 
 concerning the marvellous period of Duff's activity. They 
 were unanimous in asserting it to be a time wholly unique ; 
 they stated that in the highest circles Christianity became the 
 subject of the most animated and most interested discussion ; 
 that every family had had to face the conversion of its most 
 able and gifted members ; and that an excitement and a tremor 
 swept through Hindu society such as had never been experi- 
 enced before — nor since. Conversions of persons of the highest 
 rank were not limited to Duff's College at Calcutta. At 
 Masulipatam, Ainala Bushanam, Manchala Ratnam and Jani 
 Ali gave up heathenism for Christianity ; at Agra, Tara Chand 
 and Madho Ram ; at Bombay, the Parsi Dhanjibhai Naoroji 
 and others. From that time converts from the highest classes 
 of the people have been an important element in Indian 
 Christendom, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 185 
 
 (b) TJic Patrojiage of Heathenism — Lord Bentinck's Reforms ^ 
 
 According to its professed policy, the Company represented 
 the principle of the strictest religious neutrality. It piqued 
 itself not a little thereupon, and was never tired of calling 
 attention to this excellent and only suitable " traditional " 
 policy. But from the beginning of the nineteenth century we 
 can trace a most lamentable departure from principle, a depart- 
 ure which became more serious as every decade passed by, and 
 which led the Company on the one hand into an unbounded 
 favouritism towards the native religions, and on the other into 
 an unjust slighting of Christianity. The most scandalous 
 form under which this "universal support" of Indian idolatry 
 made its appearance was the Pilgrim Tax. When the English 
 took possession of Orissa in 1803, the dusky blue god of Puri, 
 Jagannath (Lord of the World), declared his wish — bribery 
 of the Temple Brahmans was successful in making the oracle 
 speak — to be taken henceforth under the protection of the 
 English. The Company accepted most readily the patronage 
 of the famous shrine and the extensive lands which appertained 
 thereto. Soon orders arrived from London to reimpose and 
 levy on behalf of the Company the Pilgrim Tax formerly taken 
 by the Muhammadans, when they were rulers of the land. 
 Marquis Wellesley, at that time Governor-General, refused to 
 execute this order, but in 1806 his weak-minded successor. 
 Barlow, placed all the temple property at Puri under British 
 management, and levied the Pilgrim Taxes relentlessly. 
 The Government undertook in return to maintain the temple 
 buildings, to pay the priests, and to provide for the regular 
 celebration of the temple worship. They made a good 
 thing out of it, for in the first year their net profits amounted 
 to over 135,000 rupees. But how were missionaries to reply to 
 the reproaches of the heathen, when the latter asked, " If 
 Jagannath be nothing, why does the Company receive so many 
 rupees from him?" or "If your religion were true, your 
 Government would support it, but that it does not do, on the 
 contrary it supports our idols." Gaya in Bihar, a spot far 
 famed since the days of Buddha, and one which since the 
 Brahmanical restoration had become almost as famous a shrine 
 for the Hindus as for the Buddhists, offered a new source 
 of income : Pilgrim Taxes were likewise instituted there, and 
 levied with the same painful regularity. Here the Company 
 had the satisfaction of seeing a marked increase in the number 
 of pilgrims directly the English Pilgrim Taxes were introduced ; 
 from 21,000 it rose to over 100,000, and the profit in good years 
 ^ Cf, Basle Missionary Magazine, 185S, p. 259, 
 
1 86 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ran to between 250,000 and 300,000 rupees. The flattering 
 success of the taxes at these two famous shrines induced the 
 Company to introduce this heathen poll-tax at yet other 
 shrines and temples at Allahabad, at Tirupati in the Telugu 
 country, at Kashipur, Sarkara, Sambal, Hawa, and other 
 places. The net takings of these Pilgrim Taxes amounted on 
 the average to ;^7 5,000 and upwards per annum. To under- 
 stand, but not to excuse, these proceedings we must remember 
 that the English masters of the country now found themselves 
 in a peculiar and difficult position. They had annexed one 
 state after another, and had undertaken, besides the mere 
 government, also the duties which had devolved upon their 
 predecessors. Of these the management of the temples and of 
 the temple property was one. Of course, a way could have 
 been found out of the difficulty had there been any desire for it, 
 but the will was lacking, especially in view of the great profits 
 which were realised in this way. 
 
 Soon they went farther, and began openly to support the 
 heathen temples. InConjeeveram,to the south-westof Madras, the 
 famous temple of Siva, one of the most beautiful structures in the 
 Tamil country, had fallen into decay, and the temple Brahmans 
 either could not or would not repair it. Thereupon Place, an 
 English official, induced the Company to restore the temple, at 
 no small cost, " in order to incite the natives to the exercise of 
 virtue." And the Christian (!) official himself offered a sacrifice 
 to the temple and to its god which for years afterwards was 
 preserved and exhibited as a curiosity. When once a beginning 
 had been made and the Government had openly declared itself 
 to be a patron of idol-worship, there was no stopping its further 
 progress in this direction. Civil and military officials were com- 
 pelled to honour heathen and Muhammadan festivals with their 
 presence, and even in many cases to present the sacrificial gifts 
 of the Government to the Brahmans. On the occasion of festive 
 processions the idols were greeted with a " royal salvo " of 
 cannon. In times of drought the Government appointed and 
 paid Brahmans to pray for rain. When the clumsy idol cars 
 were brought out, thousands of pilgrims were driven by main 
 force into harness to drag them along like brute beasts. For 
 rebuilding, restoration, and other work in connection with 
 temples, tens of thousands of rupees were disbursed, and the 
 very gastronomical necessities of the Brahmans were not for- 
 gotten. Even pagan festivals which had dropped into oblivion 
 were revived, and all sense of shame was lost. The manage- 
 ment of the property of one temple after another was taken 
 over by the Company ; its officials were then responsible for 
 everything : the construction of new idol carts, new idols, the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 187 
 
 appointment and remuneration of the Brahmans, painters, 
 musicians, rice-boilers, and watchmen, and that their cup 
 might be full, even the temple filles-de-joie, the Nautch girls, 
 received their pay from h^nglish officials. At one time (in 1858), 
 long after the fight against this entire system had been com- 
 menced, 8292 idols and temples in the Madras Presidency 
 received annually '^']6,'j'&o rupees ; in the Bombay Presidency 
 26,589 temples and idols received 698,593 rupees, and in the 
 total area of the Company's jurisdiction 1,715,586 rupees were 
 annually spent in the support of idolatry.^ At Madras, on New 
 Year's Day, at the Pongol festival, when the Hindu worships the 
 tools by means of which he gains a livelihood, the account- 
 books and official documents in the Government offices, as 
 well as the writing-desks, inkpots and penholders, were solemnly 
 worshipped by order of the Government, who also paid for the 
 whole being carried out with an elaborate ceremonial ! In 
 many cases private individuals went even further, they erected 
 temples to heathen deities and endowed them. With special 
 frequency did this happen in the case of those who had heathen 
 mistresses, to please whom shrines were often erected within 
 their own grounds. 
 
 From a Company which so continually identified itself with 
 Hinduism in the most obvious and deliberate way, little else 
 was to be expected than that the spread of Christianity would 
 inconvenience it and that it should oppose Christianity by all 
 means in its power. No Christians were allowed in the ranks 
 of its Hindu officials ; it would accept any and every 
 Muhammadan or Hindu, but a native Christian was a de- 
 spicable creature to be looked on with the gravest suspicion. 
 When in 18 16 British rule was established in the newly 
 annexed province of Mysore, Christians were expressly 
 debarred from the courts of justice, to which under native 
 rule they had enjoyed an unquestioned right of access. 
 
 ^ How this open countenancing of Hinduism was looked on in missionary circles 
 is shown by an assertion made by the then President-General of the Basle Missionary 
 Society. " Idol-worship in India was on the down grade. Many temples were openly 
 falling into decay, the temple treasures were squandered by covetous Brahmans, and 
 the entire idol system had no strength to raise itself up again. Its dissolution seemed 
 impending. Then came the Government and rebuilt the temples, took over the 
 temple property and saw to it that idol festivals and processions were celebrated with 
 their pristine splendour. The whole structure of Hinduism put on a new dignity and 
 new prestige, so that in the eyes of the people it appeared to be as it were born again. 
 Therefore the number of pilgrims, in spite of the high Pilgrim Taxes, increased at 
 famous shrines to an unbelievable extent ; the Brahmans came to be regarded as 
 Government officials, and the natives were convinced that, betwixt the Hindu religion 
 and that of the Government, no difference at all existed. A powerful instrument of 
 proof was thus placed in the hands of the Brahmans themselves, enabling them to 
 justify their false religion in the eyes of the deluded populace" {Basle Miss. I^Icn^., 
 1858, p. 346). 
 
1 88 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Because a missionary had baptized two female converts in 
 Bengal, he was condemned on an alleged complaint of the 
 god Manu " because he had made the women shrewish towards 
 their husbands " ! Happily this ridiculous sentence was re- 
 versed by the Supreme Court at Calcutta to which the missionary 
 appealed. A long time after Lord Bentinck had put an end to 
 the degrading punishment of flogging in the army, an English 
 general was not ashamed to sentence a Christian who had 
 deserted but who had then voluntarily returned to two hundred 
 strokes with the cat-o'-nine-tails. The Christians were made to 
 realise that under all circumstances and at all times they were 
 in no wise to count on any favour from the Government (cf 
 p. 132). 
 
 The first man who had the courage and the ability to initiate 
 a more sensible regime in India was the Governor-General, 
 Lord Wm. Bentinck (1828-1835). With him India's days of 
 reform began. 
 
 Bentinck went out to India under peculiar circumstances. 
 The financial position of the Company was in danger; its 
 dividends had decreased enormously; the burden of debt pressed 
 upon it more heavily than ever ; anxious souls feared bankruptcy 
 for the commercial venture which had hitherto rolled in money. 
 
 Bentinck was to save the situation. And he was indeed a 
 financial genius ; in a very short time he was able to effect 
 considerable economies in all branches of the administration, to 
 open up new sources of income, and to decrease the debt. 
 But Bentinck was more than a skilful financier, he was also an 
 energetic and far-seeing statesman ; and because the Company 
 had need of him and was greatly in his debt, it had to give him 
 a free hand in other matters. Bentinck was wise enough to 
 introduce his reform policy in matters that involved no expendi- 
 ture, but which were inherently repulsive to every English 
 Christian. Amongst the crudest customs of Indian heathenism 
 was that of widow-burning or suttee. The inquiries of the 
 missionaries and the narratives of servants of the Company, who 
 could speak as eye-witnesses, left no doubt that this custom 
 was carried out with terrible frequency. It has been calculated 
 that in the British districts of the Bengal of that time no less 
 than 5997 widows were burnt alive in ten years, and only too 
 often the unfortunate women were induced to submit to this 
 rite or were thrown by main force amidst the flames of the 
 burning pile. Lord Bentinck forbade suttee and threatened 
 in the future to subject to the penalty of death all those who 
 were in any way connected with it (1829). 
 
 By this action he struck at the very root of Hinduism. The 
 Court of Directors in London trembled when it heard of this 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 189 
 
 measure so diametrically opposed to the policy hitherto pursued 
 by the Company. Old Indian civil servants conjured the 
 Governor-General to repeal the Act ; but he stood firm, and 
 India remained quiet. Encouraged by this first success, 
 Bentinck went step by step farther : he forbade the drowning 
 of children in the sacred rivers, especially the Ganges ; the 
 exposure of the aged and the sick on the banks of the Ganges ; 
 the tempting to self-sacrifice by throwing oneself beneath the 
 wheels of the idol cars in great procession, or by submitting to 
 the tortures of hook-swinging ; with iron hand he rooted out the 
 Thags, that fearful criminal caste of North India who in honour 
 of the goddess Kali strangled all who came within their power. 
 Bentinck was also the first who dared to do away, even in part, 
 with the injustice caused by the systematic slighting of Chris- 
 tians. First, in 1832, he issued the decree for the province of 
 Bengal alone that in the eyes of British justice every subject, of 
 whatsoever caste or creed, was equal, and that no one was to be 
 deprived of his citizenship or his birthright should he embrace 
 another creed, Christianity included. All these reforms were 
 carried out without difficulty, and although they attacked long- 
 existent deeply rooted prejudices of the Hindus, they were 
 followed neither by general discontent, mutiny, nor insurrection. 
 This gave great encouragement to the men in England and in 
 India who from Christian and philanthropic motives disapproved 
 of the " traditional " policy of the Company. As the representa- 
 tive of this section Lord Glenelg, a son of Charles Grant, and a 
 true chip of the old block, determined in the year 1833 to 
 commit himself to a downright and decisive course of action and 
 to strike at the very roots of the Company's connection with 
 Indian idolatry. He enacted a law the seven clauses of which 
 read as follows : — 
 
 " It is hereby decreed : ^ — 
 
 " First, that the interference of British functionaries in the 
 interior management of native temples, in the customs, habits, 
 and religious proceedings of their priests and attendants, in the 
 arrangement of their ceremonies, rites and festivals, and 
 generally in the conduct of their interior economy, shall 
 cease. 
 
 " Secondly, that the Pilgrim Tax shall be everywhere 
 abolished. 
 
 " Tliirdly, that fines and offerings shall no longer be con- 
 sidered as sources of revenue by the British Government, and 
 they shall consequently no longer be collected or received by 
 the servants of the East India Company. 
 
 ' Cf. Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 416. 
 
190 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ^' Fourtklj', that no servant of the East India Company 
 shall hereafter be engaged in the collection, or management, or 
 custodies of monies in the nature of fines or offerings, under 
 whatsoever name they may be known, or in whatever manner 
 obtained, or whether furnished in cash or in kind. 
 
 " Fifthly, that no servant of the East India Company shall 
 hereafter devise any emolument resulting from the above- 
 mentioned or similar sources. 
 
 " Sixthly, that in all matters relating to their temples, their 
 worship, their festivals, their religious practices, their ceremonial 
 observances, our native subjects be left entirely to themselves. 
 
 " Seventhly, that in every case in which it had been found 
 necessary to form and keep up a police force specially with a 
 view to the peace and security of the pilgrims or the worshippers, 
 such police shall hereafter be maintained and made available 
 out of the general revenues of the country." 
 
 According to the customary form of procedure, this Bill of 
 Lord Glenelg's had to be submitted for approval to the 
 Directors of the Board of Control and to the Court of Directors. 
 Both were practically unanimous in refusing it as unworkable. 
 But Glenelg pointed out to them that, since he had the right to 
 send out such a law to India without their approbation, it would 
 be in no wise conducive to their prestige should he enact it 
 against their wishes. The Directors were compelled to submit 
 and the law was dispatched to India, only to cause grave 
 shakings of the head there amongst all the exponents of the 
 policy which had hitherto prevailed. None of the provincial 
 Governments had either the desire or the courage even to 
 attempt to put it into effect. Three years went by, and the 
 law seemed buried and forgotten. When in 1836 an important 
 deputation headed by Bishop Corrie reminded the Governor of 
 Madras of its existence and begged that it might at last be 
 enforced, the latter rudely replied : " The Governor perceives 
 with regret that the Bishop, far from fulfilling the duties of his 
 calling, one of which was surely the controlling of immoderate 
 zeal generated by heated passions, was on the contrary busying 
 himself with matters which were only calculated to endanger 
 the peace and quietude of the country." It had in the mean- 
 time become clear to the Court of Directors in England that 
 Glenelg's Law was going to make a yearly difference to their 
 income of ^30,000, to such a sum did their takings from Indian 
 idol-worship amount, and they loudly proclaimed that such a 
 sum was " too high a price for them to be willing to pay for 
 falling in with the behests of Exeter Hall spouters." 
 
 A new Dispatch was sent to India which practically repealed 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 191 
 
 this Law of 1833, and which made the earlier laws if possible 
 more binding and the favouring of idolatry even more definite. 
 But overreaching may go top far. In consequence of this 
 repeal a much respected Anglo-Indian judge, Nelson, resigned 
 his office. And when under the commandership-in-chief of 
 Sir Peregrine Maitland, a Christian drummer in the Madras 
 Army was about to be punished because he had refused to beat 
 his drum in honour of an idol procession, the upright Maitland 
 preferred to lay down his command rather than take part in 
 this coquetry with heathenism. 
 
 The resignations of Nelson and Maitland gave rise to intense 
 excitement in England, and the indignation of the whole 
 country compelled the Court of Directors, in 1840, to recognise 
 the main lines of Glenelg's Law of 1833. The official con- 
 nection with idol-worship was gradually broken off; the 
 Pilgrim Taxes ceased ; the temples were restored to the 
 Brahmans ; the presence of British officers at heathen festivals 
 was no longer demanded. It was a long time before this 
 radical change was accomplished ; the Company had taken 
 over far too many temple-lands and had administered far too 
 many temple treasuries, and it was unpleasant and irritating to 
 relinquish these fat morsels. Even at the time of the Mutiny 
 in 1857, when the administration was taken over by the British 
 Government, many shrines and temples were still dependent on 
 the Company. But in any case a new era had dawned, and in 
 this one point, at any rate, the older policy was radically flung 
 aside. In 1862 the last temple and mosque in British hands 
 were, through a further law, made over to Hindu and Muham- 
 madan corporations. 
 
 The year 1845 inaugurated yet another change. As 
 Bentinck's above-mentioned Decree of 1832, which assured a 
 Christian's equality of privilege in the law courts of the province 
 of Bengal, had been put into effect without any considerable 
 amount of opposition, the Company now allowed itself under 
 stress of public opinion to extend the decree to the whole of the 
 British possessions in India. It enacted in 1845 the so-called 
 lex loci, of which the weightiest clause reads as follows : — 
 
 " So much ^ of any law or usage now in force within the 
 territories subject to the government of the East India Com- 
 pany as inflicts on any person forfeiture of rights or property, 
 by reason of his or her renouncing, or having been excluded 
 from the communion of any religion, shall cease to be en- 
 forced as law in the courts of the East India Company, 
 and in the courts established by Royal Charter within the said 
 territories." 
 
 ^ Cf. Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 459, 
 
192 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 We may at once add that the year 1 866 saw another important 
 law passed for the protection of Christians, Up to that time, 
 when a Christian forsook his old faith, he had been forbidden, 
 on pain of condemnation for bigamy, to remarry as long as his 
 heathen wife remained alive, and as the wife's heathen relations 
 generally prevented her forcibly from following her converted 
 husband, both of them were condemned to an involuntary and 
 painful celibacy. It was for this reason that that excellent 
 Anglo-Indian legislator, Sir Henry S. Maine, got a law passed 
 by which under certain conditions the remarriage of converted 
 natives was permitted, if their heathen wives definitely refused 
 to remain with them — a great boon for the native Christians. 
 
 In the meantime the strife in connection with the renewal of 
 the Charter in 1833 had wrung fresh concessions from the 
 Company. Not only did the nation deprive it of the trade 
 monopoly with China, which it had managed to retain during 
 the conflicts of 181 3, but a parliamentary resolution compelled 
 it for the future to desist from all manner of trading, to dispose 
 of all stores, provisions, and effects both in India and at home ; 
 to sell all warehouses, ships, etc., and henceforth to carry on no 
 kind of commercial enterprise. The " trading Company " was 
 to become a " governing body." At the same time India was 
 thrown open to the whole world, and any and every honest 
 man who liked might settle there. This provision opened up 
 India likewise to the missionary activity of other nations. It 
 was in this year that the missionary labours of the non-English 
 missionary societies began in India. 
 
 It was a heated conflict in which one concession after 
 another was gained, partly by the ever growing commercial 
 interests of the English people, partly by the now awakened 
 public conscience, partly by an increasing sense of imperial 
 responsibility in the newly acquired territories, at the expense 
 of the tough conservatism of the Court of Directors. The 
 Company can claim no praise for having carried through any 
 of these important reforms on its own initiative. The old 
 inveterate commercial spirit of the trading house had to be 
 overborne by the new spirit of statesmanship of the nation and 
 by its tremendously strengthened Christian and religious 
 conscience. 
 
 (c) TJie Advent of German and Americati Missiona^'ies — 
 T]ie Opening up of the Panjab. 1 833-1 857 
 
 It is no part of our intention to trace here the work of each 
 separate missionary society. That must ever be the task of 
 the historians of the different societies. It only concerns us to 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 193 
 
 give a general view of the first appearance of those factors 
 which were of direct importance for Indian missions. We 
 will here mention two events which went to the very root of 
 missionary development in India. Unfortunately that land is 
 periodically scourged by famines, which at times have attained 
 the most truly terrible dimensions. In 1837- 1838 a great famine 
 afflicted the Ganges Doab, Rohilkhand, and vast stretches of 
 Bengal, districts which are otherwise the most fertile and most 
 thickly populated of any in India. A million of human beings 
 are said to have perished of hunger and its consequences. It 
 was on this occasion that the Government for the first time 
 instituted relief works on a large scale and saved thousands 
 from death. This time of distress gave the various missions 
 too an opportunity of carrying on rescue work amongst the 
 helpless dying masses. It was then that the missionary 
 societies founded the first important orphanages for famine 
 orphans, such as those at Sigra, near Benares, which became 
 famous under the brilliant superintendence of a German 
 missionary Leupolt, and at Sicandra, near Agra, where the 
 Government presented the Societies with the great mausoleum 
 of Miriam Zamani, wife of Akbar, whom tradition asserts to 
 have been a Christian. A peculiar movement in the Krishnagar 
 district of Lower Bengal, to the north of Calcutta, which had 
 been occupied by the Church Missionary Society in 1 821, was 
 in part a consequence of the generosity exercised during this 
 period of famine. From various motives upwards of five 
 thousand Hindus and Muhammadans accepted the Christian 
 faith within a very few years (183 8- 1840), an unexpectedly rich 
 harvest, as to the quality and importance of which illusions were 
 most certainly entertained at first in Christian circles. The 
 movement ended as inexplicably as it had begun, and it left 
 the missionary authorities with the difficult and thankless task 
 of raising a host of merely nominal Christians to the religious 
 and moral level of a Christian community. 
 
 In the Punjab, in the far north-west of India, a mighty 
 kingdom had arisen at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 under the Sikh prince, Ranjit Singh. This was the only king- 
 dom in India which appeared to offer great obstacles to the 
 progress of the English. The latter were therefore far from dis- 
 pleased when the over-confident Sikhs, after Ranjit Sino-h's 
 death in 1839, raided the English territories and thereby pre- 
 pared the way for their own destruction. After two short but 
 sharp campaigns in 1845 and 1849, and a series of the bloodiest 
 battles England had ever fought in India, the whole of the 
 Punjab was annexed (1849) and incorporated in the Indian 
 Empire. It was remarkable that this new province, so difficult 
 13 
 
194 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 to pacify, should receive as governors a succession of highly 
 gifted and brilliantly distinguished men like Henry and Sir 
 John Lawrence, Robert Montgomery, Sir Herbert Edwardes, 
 General Reynell Taylor, men who in addition to their other 
 distinctions were men of decided piety and great missionary 
 zeal. These men not only made no secret of their Christian 
 profession before Hindu and Muhammadan alike, and allowed 
 Christian principles to control their administration, but they 
 supported the work of the missionaries with a self-sacrifice and an 
 energy of personal initiative such as have hardly been equalled 
 in the history of Indian missions. The Church Missionary 
 Society was the first to benefit by this extraordinarily 
 favourable state of things. That Society took up mission work 
 in the Punjab in 1852. Assisted by the magnificent gifts from 
 these distinguished Englishmen, it was enabled to establish a 
 number of stations in rapid succession: Amritsar in 1852, 
 Kangra in 1854, Multan and Peshawar in 1855 ; in addition it 
 received from the " Himalaya Missionary Union " (founded at 
 Simla in 1840) its two stations at Simla and Kotgarh, both of 
 which had been established in 1843. 
 
 Apart from these operations and those of the Scotch 
 Societies, we find that this second quarter of the century was 
 for the British missionary societies a time of consolidation, of 
 quiet and secret working, of very slow but general development, 
 noticeably different from the febrile and impulsive initiative of 
 the two previous decades. It proved an important step that 
 the High Church Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
 strengthened and supported in England as it now was by the 
 ritualistic movement of Dr. Pusey and his school, should at this 
 time (from 1835 onwards) have energetically grappled with the 
 responsibilities which devolved upon it with the heritage of the 
 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ^ in Tinnevelly, 
 in the Cauvery district, and in Calcutta and its suburbs. Its 
 reward was that along with the Church Missionary Society it 
 was privileged to take part in a great ingathering of Shanans in 
 Tinnevelly. In addition the year 1854 saw it enter upon a new 
 sphere of work at the old Moghul capital, Delhi, on the borders 
 of the Punjab. 
 
 The Church Missionary Society in the meantime had been 
 reorganising its previously unsuccessful evangelistic work amongst 
 the members of the old Syrian Church at Travancore. As a new 
 field of labour it inaugurated its Telugu Mission in 1841. Be- 
 ginning at Masulipatam, where a College which soon gained for 
 itself renown was established under the direction of the famous 
 educational missionary Robert Noble, it afterwards extended its 
 1 P. 156. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 195 
 
 operations to Bezwada on the Kistna (1853) and to EUore 
 (1854). 
 
 The year 1843 was fraught with grave issues to Scotch 
 missions ; in Scotland the Free Church shook itself loose from 
 the National Church, and whilst all the Indian missionaries cast 
 in their lot with the former, the State Church claimed the whole 
 of the mission property, and likewise the colleges built 
 at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras by its great educational 
 missionaries, Duff, Wilson, and Anderson. The Free Church of 
 Scotland gave proof of the most marvellous self-sacrifice, and not 
 only made provison for all the missionaries who desired to enter 
 its service, but in a comparatively short time built fresh colleges 
 in the three Indian capitals. It even had the courage to 
 establish, under the charge of the zealous and talented 
 Stephen Hislop, a large new mission centre in Nagpur, the capital 
 of hitherto neglected Central India. The Established Church of 
 Scotland, which at the Disruption had retained the fully 
 equipped mission stations, had difficulty in finding the requisite 
 number of duly qualified missionaries and in meeting current 
 expenses, as it possessed far less of the missionary spirit than 
 did the men of the Free Church. The great educational institu- 
 tions of Bombay and Madras, therefore, were gradually allowed 
 to lapse, and the only important college maintained by them 
 was the " General Assembly's Institution " at Calcutta. In order 
 to take part in the actual proclamation of the gospel amongst 
 the North Indian peoples, in addition to their educational work 
 in the great towns, a mission on a small scale was commenced 
 by the Established Church of Scotland in 1855 at Sialkot and 
 Wazirabad in the Punjab. Through the enthusiasm of Fergus- 
 son, a former chaplain of the Company, this effort was in 1863 
 extended to the Protectorate of Chamba, on the beautiful lower 
 slopes of the Himalayas, Acting on the advice of Dr. Wilson, 
 the Irish Presbyterians also made a beginning in 1841 at Bombay, 
 and at Rajkot on the Kathiawar Peninsula, and from these 
 centres they enlarged their sphere of work so as to include all 
 Kathiawar and Gujarat. In 1846 they took over the London 
 Missionary Society's station at Surat, and in 1859 all the other 
 stations in Gujarat which had belonged to this older missionary 
 society. 
 
 Of other new British Societies, there only remains for us to 
 mention the disconnected work of some pious Baptists and 
 Darbyites in the delta of the Godavari. The founder of this 
 work was the well-known Darbyite, Anthony Groves. At his 
 request two Baptist artisans settled in 1857 at Narsapur, on the 
 chief western estuary of the Godavari, and from there they began 
 to work throughout the entire delta,especially among the Madigas. 
 
196 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Of far greater importance, however, for the later develop- 
 ment of Indian missions, was the extensive way in which, during 
 this same period, non-British societies entered the field, and 
 especially German and American societies. The Charter of 
 1833 had not only opened up Indian trade to all nations, it 
 likewise opened up Indian missions to all Churches. To Con- 
 tinental and American Churches it was a potent and widely 
 understood signal for a great revival of missionary zeal. But 
 let us begin with German missions. 
 
 It would seem as if the Basle Society, under its kindly and 
 well-informed Director, Wilhelm Hoffmann, had only been 
 waiting for the issue of the new Charter to start work in 
 India on a large scale. In the year 1834 a beginning was 
 made at Mangalore, on the west coast ; in South Kanara, where 
 Tulu was spoken by the majority of the peasant population, a 
 second station was founded at Mulki, a little to the north of 
 Mangalore ; whilst yet a third was located at Udapi, somewhat 
 farther north, on the first signs of a general movement amongst 
 the Tulus. As a second sphere the South Maratha country was 
 chosen in 1837, a land in which the ruling tongue is the same 
 as that in Kanara, viz. Kanarese. Dharwar and Hubli were 
 occupied in 1837 and 1839, whilst somewhat later, when in 
 consequence of a famine too sanguine hopes were entertained 
 of a great religious movement amongst certain sects and caste 
 divisions, stations were created at Guledgudd (185 1) and 
 Betigeri (1853). Simultaneously the narrow strip of Malabar 
 coast to the south of South Kanara, inhabited by a dense 
 Malayalam population, was taken possession of, and stations 
 were erected at Tellicherry (1839), Cannanore (1841), Calicut 
 the capital (1842), Kodakal (1857), and Palghat (1858). Special 
 circumstances compelled the opening of a mission in Coorg 
 in 1853, and led to the location of a station at Anandapur; 
 and a magnificent donation at Keti, from Casamajor, a rich 
 Englishman, introduced the Basle missionaries in 1847 to the 
 lofty and healthy Blue Mountains. Thus, in the course of 
 little more than two decades, the field of the Basle Missionary 
 Society was occupied to practically the same extent as it has 
 been worked during the past half-century. One cannot but 
 marvel at the skill with which this tiny banner has been planted 
 in the forefront of the attack upon the great fortress of India. 
 The operations of the Basle Society are more uniform, more 
 coherent, and on the whole less broken into by the spheres of 
 labour of other Protestant missions than those of any society 
 of its size in India. Moreover, in this field there are only two 
 great language groups, Kanarese and Malayalam, to which 
 Tulu is nearly related, and of which Badaga is simply a 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 197 
 
 dialect. Fever-ridden lowlands and storm-enveloped heights 
 are to be found within districts in which the same language 
 is spoken, so that as regards the work of the missionaries, 
 even when not in perfect health, comparatively favourable 
 conditions prevail. And further the Basle Society produced 
 during its first twenty-five years' labours quite a number of 
 distinguished men, such as that original and impressive person- 
 ality Samuel Hebich, the acute and versatile Mogling, the 
 scholarly Gundert, and others. 
 
 A further attempt of the Basle Society to gain a foothold 
 at Dacca and Comilla, in Eastern Bengal, between the years 
 1847 and 1850, failed owing to the secession of the missionaries 
 sent there to the ranks of the Baptists in 1850. 
 
 Likewise the Protestant Lutheran Missionary Society 
 (founded at Dresden in 1836), tired of its initial and unpromising 
 missionary enterprise amongst the rapidly vanishing Papuans 
 of Australia, was just at this time on the look out for a great 
 and promising field of labour. The steady perseverance of its 
 first Indian missionary Cordes, and some adroit profiting by 
 circumstances, allowed it to obtain a footing in Tranquebar, 
 and to take over the neglected inheritance of the Danish 
 veterans. From thence, partly owing to voluntary withdrawals 
 on the part of other societies, and partly in the course of 
 unedifying strife with those societies, the Leipzig Society 
 rapidly extended its operations over the Cauvery districts, as 
 far as Madras in the north, that is to say, with the exception 
 of Tinnevelly and Madura, which was occupied later, over the 
 entire field occupied by the old Lutheran fathers : Poriar (1842), 
 Mayavaram (1844), Madras (1848), Tanjore (185 1), Manigramam 
 (1852), and in 1856 Kumbakonam and Coimbatore. 
 
 When Pastor Gossner severed his connection with the Berlin 
 Missionary Society in 1836, and on his own initiative began to 
 send out missionaries, his manifold connections with English 
 missionary circles, in which there was at that time a great lack 
 of suitable candidates, soon directed his attention to India, So 
 early as 1839, in company with Start, a pious Englishman, he 
 had sent the first missionaries up the Ganges, where they 
 opened operations at Hadjipore (1839), Muzaffarpur and Chapra 
 (1840), Buxar (1852), Ghazipur (1855), and Darbhanga (1863). 
 At Chapra Dr. Ribbentrop carried on medical work with great 
 devotion, and at Ghazipur Rev. G, W. Ziemann fulfilled his 
 labours of love with true Teutonic thoroughness and fidelity. 
 When in 1840 the previously mentioned Himalaya Missionary 
 Union was founded by a number of wealthy Englishmen, it 
 sent a request to Gossner for missionaries, and he dispatched 
 a number to Simla and Kotgarh, Dr. Prochnow. who afterwards 
 
198 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 became General Inspector of the Gossner Mission, being among 
 those sent to Kotgarh. When that earnest friend of missions, 
 Donald M'Leod, was British representative at Nagpur (1835- 
 1843), and he expressed a wish to establish a Christian farm 
 colony amongst the Gonds, which was to serve as a nucleus 
 for further mission work, Gossner sent out in 1841 six young 
 brethren to lofty and remote Gondwana. They settled at the 
 Gond village of Caranja, on the Amarkantak plateau, near 
 the sources of the Godavari. Most unfortunately the cholera 
 blighted this promising missionary project within a few months 
 of its inception ; four of the six missionaries fell victims to the 
 epidemic and died, and the two survivors fled to Nagpur. 
 These undertakings were but preludes to Gossner's great mission 
 work amongst the Kols in Chota Nagpur. In 1845 the first 
 of Gossner's missionaries settled in Ranchi. After a few 
 fruitless years, this mission began from 1850 onwards to garner 
 comparatively rich harvests; in 1857, when the Mutiny broke 
 out, there were already goo baptized converts. 
 
 Likewise the Women's Association for the Education of 
 Females in the Orient,^ founded in Berlin in 1842, found its 
 chief field in India. Its work was done largely in connection 
 with the Church Missionary Society, which had at that time so 
 many German missionaries in its service that the addition of 
 a number of German Sisters created no difficulties. They 
 devoted themselves to the work of the Girls' Orphanage at 
 Sigra, near Benares (1857) ; when that institution was transferred 
 to Sicandra, near Agra, in 1863, they followed it to its new 
 home. Several very capable Sisters joined both English and 
 American societies from the ranks of this Association. 
 
 Just for a short time (i 842-1 847) the older Berlin Missionary 
 Society had a station at Ghazipur, but it was abandoned because 
 of the Society's rapidly increasing work in South Africa. In 
 1843 the North German Missionary Society also began operations 
 amongst the Telugus at Rajahmundry, on the Lower Godavari ; 
 but this work they passed on to the American German Lutherans 
 in 1848. In consequence of disputes on questions of dogma and 
 financial stress, this mission has since 1869 been shared between 
 two separate but harmoniously working American Lutheran 
 societies, of which the one, the Lutheran General Council, has 
 its headquarters at Rajahmundry, the other (by far the more 
 successful of the two), the General Synod, at Guntur, on the 
 Lower Kistna. 
 
 Not actually with a view to work in India, but called into 
 being through the magnetic enthusiasm of the imaginative 
 GiJtzlaff, was the work undertaken in 1857 by the Moravian 
 
 ^ " Frauenvcrein ftir Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechls ini Morgenlande." 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 199 
 
 Brethren in the mountain fastnesses of Little Tibet, amidst the 
 scattered and unreceptive tribes, half Tibetan and half Buddhist, 
 to be found in the neighbourhood of Kyelang. This work has 
 been prolific of difficulties and, as far as human eyes can see, 
 extremely little success has accompanied it. A second station 
 was opened in 1862 at Poo, in the highland State of Kunawar, 
 on the Upper Sutlej, but their most important step has been 
 the establishment of a medical mission at Leh, in Ladakh, 
 in 1885. 
 
 Equally as important as the appearance of the Germans 
 in the Indian mission field was the well-manned and richly 
 financed work undertaken by the American societies, especi- 
 ally by the Baptists (American Baptist Union), by the Con- 
 gregationalists (American Board), and by the Presbyterian 
 (American Presbyterian Mission Board North). We have 
 already found the Baptists labouring in Burma as early as 
 181 3; we saw how they extended their operations when they 
 found means of access to the forest and mountain tribes of the 
 Karens, In the period we are now discussing this work made 
 great progress. In 1840 Rangoon was appointed as head- 
 quarters of the mission to the Karens, and in the same year a 
 station was created at Bassein. In 1853 were added the 
 important stations of Henzada, Shwedaung, and Toungoo, in 
 1854 that of Prome. By 1861 there was a Christian community 
 of 59,000 souls. 
 
 In the meantime the American Baptists had started work in 
 two new districts in India proper; in 1840 the Telugu Mission, 
 taking Nellore as centre (this station was so unfruitful for thirty 
 years that again and again there was serious thought of its being 
 abandoned; by 1863 it had only registered 41 conversions, 
 and was termed in friendly circles the "Lone Star"), and in 
 1 841 the Assam Mission, working from Sibsagar, Nowgong 
 (1841), and Gauhati (1843); this mission too proved for a long 
 time very unfruitful. 
 
 The eyes of the American Congregationalists (American 
 Board) had been directed from the very commencement to 
 India. Thither they had sent their first missionaries in 1812; 
 it was there, in Bombay, that they had maintained one solitary 
 station since 181 3. Hitherto they had only been able to develop 
 mission work on a large scale in the Jaffna district of North 
 Ceylon. As soon as India was opened to them by the Charter 
 of 1833, they crossed over from Ceylon, and chose as their 
 special sphere the neighbouring province of Madura, where 
 they founded stations at Madura in 1834, Dindigul 1835, 
 Tirumangalam 1838, Pasumalai 1845, Periacoppam 1848, 
 Mandapasalai 1851, and Battalagundu in 1857. In little less 
 
200 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 than two decades they thus covered the entire province on which 
 they had set their affections with a comparatively close network 
 of stations. 
 
 A second field of labour was opened up to the Board in 
 Madras, which was the basis of operations for all its South 
 Indian missions during the years 1837 to 1864. From that city 
 its missionaries, and especially members of the Scudder family, 
 a family permeated through and through by genuine missionary 
 enthusiasm, invaded the Arcot district, the most northern 
 portion of the Tamil country. Stations were founded at Ami 
 (1854), Vellore (1855), Palmaner (1859), Madanapalli (1863), 
 and Tindivanam (1869), and thus a second cohesive missionary 
 enterprise was established. Since 1857 this last-named field 
 has been independently worked by the Dutch Reformed Church 
 of America, which had supported and maintained it from the 
 very beginning. From Bombay, too, the American Congrega- 
 tionalists advanced in all directions. As early as 1831 they 
 formed a Church at Ahmadnagar, where they came into con- 
 tact with the strongly established but susceptible Mahars and 
 Mangs ; in 1842 followed the station of Sirur, Satara in 1849, 
 Wadal in 1857, and Sholapur in 1861. This is the Maratha 
 Mission of the American Board. 
 
 The Presbyterians found a magnificent sphere in the United 
 Provinces and in the then gradually opening Punjab ; in 1834 
 they planted their first station in Ludhiana, and in 1836 others 
 at Saharanpur and Sabathu. They pushed on through this 
 recently annexed frontier district of the Punjab, first in a south- 
 easterly direction into the United Provinces, founding stations 
 at Allahabad in 1836, Fatehgarh in 1838, and Mainpuri in 1843. 
 Soon afterwards, when the remaining districts of the Punjab 
 were opened up, they established themselves in Jullundur (1846), 
 Ambala (1848), Lahore (1849), Dehra Dun (1853), and Rawal- 
 pindi (1856). Theirs was the first missionary society to enter 
 these parts, for even the Church Missionary Society came 
 after them, and through their distinguished missionaries, Newton, 
 Forman, the German Ullmann, etc., they were for a long -time, 
 with the Church Missionary Society, the leading society. 
 
 Not far away, the American United Presbyterians, by an 
 agreement with the Established Church of Scotland, commenced 
 to labour in Sialkot in the year 1855. 
 
 Between the English Particular Baptist Missionary Society 
 in Bengal and the General Baptists in Orissa (since 1822) 
 there now stepped in the American Free- Will Baptists, who 
 at oncp proceeded to establish a chain of closely linked 
 stations at Balasore (1838), Jellasor (1840), Midnapur (1863), 
 and Santipur. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 201 
 
 In the year 1851 a census was for the first time taken of all 
 the Indian societies, which it is true contained a fair number of 
 omissions, and which should be discreetly handled on account of 
 the various methods of computation employed by the separate 
 societies, but which at any rate provides us for the first time 
 with a moderately reliable bird's-eye view of the actual extent of 
 mission work in India at that time. According to this census, 
 Protestant missions contained 91,092 native Christians in 267 
 congregations, 14,661 of whom were communicants; there were 
 besides 33,037 communicants from amongst 59,369 Christians in 
 632 churches in Burma, and in Ceylon 11,859 Christians with 
 8182 communicants in 186 churches. 
 
 Let us limit our remarks, however, to India proper. Of the 
 91,092 Christians, 24,613 belonged to the Church Missionary 
 Society's Tinnevelly Mission, 10,315 to the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel in the same region, and 16,427 to the 
 London Missionary Society in South Travancore. These three 
 societies, which worked almost entirely in the same caste-strata, 
 the Shanar or Palmyra peasants, had therefore 51,355 converts, 
 that is, five-ninths of the sum total of missionary success up to 
 that time. The Madras Presidency as a whole, which included, 
 besides the three missions already named, the congregations 
 gathered by the old Danish missions in the Cauvery districts, 
 reported 74,176 Christians. For the whole of the remaining 
 parts of India there remain but 16,916 Christians, little more 
 than one-fifth of the numbers for Madras. This fifth existed 
 almost entirely in Bengal, which had 14,177 Christians. Of 
 these 4417 belonged to the Church Missionary Society in the 
 Krishnagar region, 3476 to the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel in its Sundarbans Mission, and 1600 to the Baptists 
 in the rice districts of Eastern Bengal. 
 
 In all other provinces and states of India nothing but 
 modest beginnings of missionary work could be discovered. 
 It was a time of laying of foundations. Nineteen larger and 
 a few smaller societies, having amongst them a total of 339 
 ordained missionaries, were engaged in the great task. Far 
 and away the strongest of these was the Church Missionary 
 Society with 64 missionaries ; then came the London Mission- 
 ary Society with 49, the Society for the Propagation of the 
 Gospel with 35, the Baptists with 30, the Basle Missionary 
 Society with 23, and the American Board with 22 missionaries. 
 These- six leading societies had in all 233 missionaries, that is 
 two-thirds of the total staff in the field. 
 
HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 3. From the Indian Mutiny (1857) to the 
 Proclamation of the Empire (1877) 
 
 (a) The Mutiny 
 
 The century following the battle of Plassey in 1757 had 
 been extraordinarily favourable to the development of the vast 
 British possessions in India. Every war had been victorious ; 
 the only dangerous rivals to the English, the Marathas in the 
 west and the Sikhs in the north-west, had been severely 
 defeated. From the ruins of the old Moghul Empire one 
 province after another had fallen into the hands of the English 
 almost without an effort. Even the powerful princes of Central 
 India, such as the Nizam of Hyderabad, recognised the 
 supremacy of England. It is true there existed an old 
 prophecy that English rule would only last for a hundred years 
 in India, that is, that it would terminate in 1857; yet however 
 diligently this oracle may have been noised abroad in India, 
 that it would ever be fulfilled appeared in the highest degree 
 improbable. That there was plenty of "yeast" in the country, 
 who could wonder? The last two decades had brought a mass 
 of reforms in which the infliuence of the spirit ,of Christianity 
 was unmistakable and whose attack upon traditions, especially 
 the traditions of Hinduism, was undeniable. The question 
 was, Would Hindu India yield to the spirit of the new era 
 without resistance? In any case, it was no wonder if it should 
 protest against the new order of things by a volcanic eruption, 
 especially as just then a most foolish foreboding was in the air 
 that the English proposed by craft or by force to destroy or 
 overturn the caste system of the Hindus. And the caste 
 question is no joking matter with the otherwise docile Hindu ; 
 if that be threatened, he is prepared to resist to the uttermost. 
 Islam was gilded by the most glorious traditions of faery 
 splendour and uncontested dominion ; would it allow itself to 
 be dethroned without an attempt to shake off the yoke ? Would 
 it consent to become the obedient underling of a Christian 
 sovereign — and a woman at that? These were the burning 
 questions of the day and they were of supreme importance to 
 the last great Muhammadan princes. Lord Dalhousie, the last 
 Governor-General before the Mutiny, had annexed one Indian 
 principality after another, and finally, in 1856, even the kingdom 
 of Gudh. Every prince in India trembled then for the continu- 
 ance of his own supremacy. Yet in spite of all this undeniable 
 unrest the causes of the Indian Mutiny are still unexplained ; 
 historians have not been able to throw definite light on the 
 " Why ? " and the " Wherefore ? " 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 203 
 
 Sure it is that the Mutiny marks the mighty outburst of 
 a flood-tide of Islamic movements which followed in the wake 
 of the Crimean War (1853-1856). As this war, according to 
 Muhammadan ideas, had terminated in a brilliant triumph 
 for the cause of Islam, the whole Muhammadan world now 
 deemed the time ripe for the re-establishment of the vanished 
 glories of the universal reign of Islam, and of course above all 
 in India. The opportunity there seemed to be most inviting. 
 The army on which England relied for the defence of the first 
 jewel in her crown, her Indian possessions, was composed of 
 46,241 European soldiers. With these, and under their orders, 
 served some 233,700 Indian Sepoys. What would happen 
 supposing these natives with their fivefold majority should 
 turn upon the few English troops, scattered all over the 
 country? What could but happen if only a portion of the 
 181 millions who at that time composed the population of the 
 gigantic Empire should dare to raise a serious revolt? More- 
 over, the Government with incomprehensible shortsightedness, 
 and in spite of the direct opposition of the Governor-General, 
 had just weakened the Anglo-Indian Army by disbanding several 
 regiments. To crown all, it was involved in a war with Persia, 
 and had dispatched thither several regiments and some of its 
 most competent generals. 
 
 It is further certain that the immediate cause for the 
 outburst of the insurrection was the introduction of a new 
 kind of cartridges, concerning which it was noised abroad, and 
 not altogether without foundation, that they were greased with 
 the fat of oxen and swine. To take them between one's teeth 
 or even to touch these cartridges was to make a Brahman 
 Hindu soldier break caste, and a Muhammadan to become 
 unclean — both "crimes worthy of death," against which a man 
 ought to protest to the last drop of his heart's blood, and which 
 caused the Sepoys to work themselves into a perfect frenzy of 
 madness. And it ought not to be forgotten that it was in the 
 Army of Bengal that the English had spared caste feeling and 
 prejudice to the minutest detail, and had thereby fostered a 
 spirit of arrogance and exaggerated self-importance. 
 
 Our business here is not to write a history of the Mutiny. 
 On May loth, 1857, it broke out at Meerut, in the North-West 
 Provinces, and spread like wildfire from garrison to garrison 
 and from province to province. In a few weeks almost the 
 whole of North India was in flames; the Englishmen who fell 
 into the hands of the mutineers were mercilessly hewn down, 
 and the women and children were not spared. Together with the 
 missionaries and their families, the native Christians, especially 
 those "who had taken a leading position as teachers or preachers, 
 
204 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 were in the gravest peril ; popular indignation ran high against 
 them as deserters from their people. The struggle soon con- 
 centrated round the three cities of Delhi, Cawnpore, and 
 Lucknow. At Cawnpore about looo Europeans and truly- 
 devoted natives defended themselves in a badly chosen encamp- 
 ment for several weeks, but on June 27th fell victims to 
 treachery. The bloodthirsty Nana Sahib had promised them 
 with the most sacred oaths a free passage down the Ganges ; 
 but when they stepped on board the boats he had provided, a 
 pitiless fire from the river bank cut them down almost to a 
 man. The 125 English ladies and children who on this 
 occasion fell into the hands of Nana Sahib, the Man of Blood, 
 were butchered in cold blood on July 15th and thrown dead or 
 dying into a well. It was the most ghastly tragedy in the 
 whole Mutiny. After a siege lasting four months, the old 
 imperial city of Delhi was on September 20th captured from 
 the hands of the mutineers. The defence of the so-called 
 Residency, or fortress, of Lucknow during the four and a half 
 months, from July to November 1857, is the most brilliant page 
 of the melancholy story. It cost, it is true, the lives of those 
 excellent generals. Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir Henry 
 Havelock, but it ended, in spite of the immeasurably superior 
 force of the enemy, in the relief of the well-nigh decimated 
 garrison. With the rescue of these valiant troops our interest 
 in this series of bloody events terminates. Only in the north 
 of Oudh did the Mutiny take the form of a national war; it 
 was nearly a year, before the last sparks of this destructive fire 
 were stamped out both there and in Central India. 
 
 That mission work in India should have suffered severe 
 losses in this sudden and powerful outburst of national passion 
 is all the less to be wondered at as a network of stations 
 reached almost from end to end of the region in which the 
 Mutiny occurred. When Delhi was captured by surprise on 
 May nth every missionary resident in the city was murdered ; 
 belonging to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel 
 were Rev. A. R. Hubbard and two catechists, Sandys and Koch ; 
 to the Baptists, J. Mackay ; a number of wives and daughters of 
 missionaries, and the English chaplain. There also fell three 
 distinguished Indian Christians, the most lamented of whom 
 was Wilajat Ali, a Baptist preacher. In the tragedy at Cawnpore 
 there fell Revs. W. H. Haycock and H. E. Cockey, of the 
 S.P.G., whilst the American Presbyterians lost Messrs. 
 J. E. Freeman, D. E. Campbell, A. D. Johnson, and R. M. 
 McMullen, who had fled for safety to Cawnpore from their 
 menaced station of Fatehgarh, together with the wives of all 
 these missionaries and two children of the Campbells, — a great 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF TROTESTANT MISSIONS 205 
 
 bath of blood and the heaviest loss sustained by the mission. 
 At Sialkot the Scotch Presbyterian missionary, Hunter, and 
 his family were also put to death. If we add several English 
 chaplains and their families to the list, we find that 35 or 37 
 members of missionary's or chaplain's families were murdered, 
 together with 15 native Christians of special distinction. 
 However painful such losses were, we cannot but admit that 
 they were, comparatively speaking, insignificant. At the time 
 the Mutiny broke out there were about 300 members of 
 missionaries' families within the affected sphere ; that scarcely 
 10 per cent, of these were killed is a pure miracle. We can 
 only explain it by the fact that the rage of the populace was 
 not directed in the first place against the missionaries, and that 
 the latter had not only faithful friends amongst the converts, 
 but they likewise found many protectors among the heathen, 
 who either assisted their flight or concealed them. Thus by 
 far the greater part were able to escape either northwards 
 to the mountains, or down stream to Agra or Benares, etc. 
 It is cheering also to read of the slight losses sustained by the 
 native Christian Church. The young Christians as a rule stood 
 firm, cases of open recantation were rare, even when the choice 
 " lay between denial and instant death. At Fatehgarh, Dhokal 
 Parshad, headmaster of the mission school (American 
 Presbyterian) in the neighbouring town of Farrukhabad, fell 
 into the hands of the rebels. They offered him life and freedom 
 for both himself and his family if he would renounce his faith. 
 He answered," What is my life, that I should deny my Saviour? 
 I have never done that since the day I first believed on Him, 
 and I never will." He bowed his head, and was immediately 
 executed. Gopinath Nundy, too, a well-known convert of Duff's, 
 and at this time a minister under the American Presbyterians, 
 fell into the hands of the enemy and was thrown into prison 
 together with his family. He too remained steadfast under 
 every kind of torture, being greatly encouraged therein by the 
 comforting words of his fellow-prisoner, Cheek, an English 
 ensign, who called out to him, " Padri, Padri, hold on ; never 
 give in." 
 
 It is unfortunately the custom to lay the blame for every 
 rebellion or war in the colonies on foreign missions and on the 
 missionaries. Such opinions were by no means slow to make 
 their appearance in England during the year 1857. At 
 Barrackpore, the great barracks at the gates of Calcutta, the 
 Christian Colonel, Wheeler by name, was stated to have caused 
 the mutiny by teaching some Sepoys who had come inquiring 
 the way of salvation. At a still earlier date in London, an 
 ex-Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, had thundered in the 
 
2o6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 House of Lords against his successor, Lord Canning, because 
 the latter was said to have put down his name for a missionary 
 subscription — which by the way was wholly untrue ! The 
 missionaries were said to have so keenly injured the deepest 
 feelings of both Hindus and Muhammadans, and to have 
 threatened so violently that which they held to be most sacred, 
 that the rebellion might be regarded as a counter blow to the 
 dreaded Christianising of the country. It will therefore not be 
 without interest, considering the frequency with which such 
 complaints and insinuations recur, at this point to enter upon a 
 quiet and unbiased examination of the matter. What are the 
 facts of the case ? 
 
 It is quite certain that many mission stations were pillaged 
 and burnt and that a piteous loss of life took place both in the 
 families of missionaries and in the native Church. These excesses, 
 however, on the part of the mutineers occurred only at those 
 stations and among those communities which lay in the direct 
 course of the devastating cyclone, and they were, on the whole, 
 remarkably few in number. Far and away the strongest mission 
 in the Mutiny area at that time, the Church Missionary Society, 
 had practically no loss of life to deplore. In those districts of 
 India where Christianity had become a power, and especially in 
 the Presidency of Madras, everything remained peaceful ; only 
 the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, where mission work 
 was still in its initial stages, rose in rebellion. With the solitary 
 exception of Oudh, which at that time was wholly unevangelised, 
 the Mutiny was confined almost entirely to the Sepoy Army, 
 and its soldiers were precisely those whom the East India 
 Company, with the most pathetic care, had always kept 
 hermetically sealed from every kind of missionary influence ! 
 A comparatively large number of military chaplains and their 
 families fell victims to the Mutiny. Furthermore the very 
 province which had been openly and expressly governed in 
 accordance with Christian principles and not with traditional 
 policy by men of decided Christian character, the Punjab, 
 remained quiet, and alone provided the means whereby the 
 Mutiny was so quickly suppressed. 
 
 The native Christian communities, feeble as their numbers 
 were, proved themselves to be thoroughly trustworthy. In the 
 fort at Agra, where large numbers of Englishmen were crowded 
 together, the native Christians readily entered their service, filling 
 the places of the heathen servants who had deserted almost to a 
 man ; and they served both faithfully and well. Native Christians 
 worked the ordnance of the fortress. In Bengal, within fourteen 
 days of the outbreak of the Mutiny, the Krishna!gar Christians 
 volunteered to support the Government with troops, the trans- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 207 
 
 port service, or anything else that lay in their power, without 
 claiming any reward or pay. At Mirzapur, near Benares, and in 
 the Hooghly district to the north of Calcutta, peace was pre- 
 served by police patrols composed of native Christians. At 
 Chota Nagpur the German missionaries offered 10,000 Kols as 
 auxiliary troops. From Burma Dr. Mason, an American Baptist, 
 promised a battalion of Christian Karens. All these offers were 
 declined by the shortsighted Government, in order not to make 
 an " invidious distinction," by accepting the help of the native 
 Christians. But for any one with eyes to see, it was clear as day- 
 light that in the native churches there was a class of people 
 whose interests were coincident with those of the Government 
 and upon whose good faith reliance could be placed absolutely. 
 (Cf. Hodgson Pratt's Y^is^ditch, Basle Missionafy Magazine, 1850, 
 p. 381.) 
 
 (b) Neutrality or Christianity — The Controversy at Home 
 
 These events and the experience of devout statesmen like the 
 two Lawrences, Robert Montgomery, Edwardes, and others in 
 the Punjab encouraged the Christian party in England, whilst 
 still deeply impressed by this tremendous calamity, to open a 
 fresh and decisive campaign against the Company's " traditional 
 policy " of neutrality. Was it not possible to diffuse throughout 
 the whole of India those Christian principles which had so 
 splendidly stood the test in the Punjab, and to exchange the 
 existing " neutral policy " for a definite " Christian policy " ? The 
 demands of the leaders of this movement were by no means 
 excessive. They are best summed up in a memorial presented 
 to Queen Victoria in 1858 by the Church Missionary Society. 
 Amongst other things, the following words occurred : " Your 
 Memorialists humbly beseech your Majesty to have it declared 
 to the public authorities in the East Indies : — 
 
 " I. That the existing policy will be no longer professed or 
 maintained, but that, as it is the belief of your Majesty and of 
 this Christian nation that the adoption of the Christian religion, 
 upon an intelligent conviction of its truth, will be an incalculable 
 benefit to the natives of India, the countenance and aid of 
 Government will be given to any legitimate measures for bringing 
 that religion under their notice and investigation. 
 
 " 2. That since the Government, in addition to maintaining its 
 own educational establishments, provides grants in aid to all 
 other schools which provide a prescribed amount of secular 
 knowledge . . . the Bible will be introduced into the system of 
 education in all the Government schools and colleges, as the 
 only standard of moral rectitude, and the source of those Christian 
 
208 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 principles upon which your Majesty's Government is to be 
 conducted. 
 
 " 3. That any connection which may still subsist between the 
 Indian Government and the revenues or ceremonies of the 
 Muhammadan, Hindu, or other false religion shall at once cease 
 and determine." 
 
 For nearly two years a hot battle was waged in England 
 by means of the press, of public meetings and in Parliament 
 on these points, — an interesting proof of the way in which 
 the public conscience of England had been stirred to the 
 very depths by the Mutiny, and of the influence which the 
 Christian party of that day, especially the Church Missionary 
 Society and its supporters, was able to exercise even in those 
 Government circles which would eventually have to decide the 
 question. It is the most strenuous campaign ever undertaken 
 against the old Indian "neutrality policy," and can therefore be 
 rightly judged only when placed alongside the abuses which 
 were covered by the wide mantle of that high-sounding word. 
 In spite of all its energy, however, the Christian party was beaten 
 and the "principle of neutrality" carried the day. The only 
 concession of any value to the cause of missions was a section of 
 the Proclamation issued on Queen Victoria assuming the sole 
 government of India. It ran as follows: "We hold Ourselves 
 bound to the natives of Our Indian territories by the same obli- 
 gations of duty which bind us to all Our other subjects, and those 
 obligations, by the blessing of Almighty God, We shall faithfully 
 and conscientiously fulfil. . . . Firmly relying Ourselves on the 
 truth of Christianity, and acknowledging with gratitude the 
 solace of religion, we disclaim alike the Right and the Desire to 
 impose Our convictions on any of Our subjects," That was, of 
 course, but little when compared with the programme of the 
 missionary party, but it was none the less a personal confession 
 of faith on the part of the Queen, and as such of value in this 
 crisis : India was to know that it was governed by a Christian. 
 
 More important than these "sand-ploughing" discussions 
 about " Christian " policy was the decision as to the future 
 government of India. All the negotiations concerning the 
 renewal of the Charter since 1783 had had the tendency of 
 gradually curtailing the rights and liberties of the Company, and 
 had given the British Government an ever increasing claim 
 upon India. It was, of course, an unheard-of condition of things 
 that a small and exclusive company of merchants should be in 
 sole possession of a great empire replete with inexhaustible 
 wealth. It was tolerable only so long as commercial relations 
 with India were difficult, their risks great, and their profits 
 uncertain. It was simply impossible when England saw that 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 209 
 
 India was far and away the richest and the most promising of 
 its possessions overseas, and when it perceived with affright that 
 this jewel had been within a hair's breadth of being lost during 
 the late revolt. However great might have been the services 
 rendered by the Company in acquiring and developing this de- 
 pendency, the national instinct of self-interest now demanded its 
 rights ; for the future India must belong to England, not to the 
 Company. Of course the Company and the Court of Directors 
 defended themselves against their own suppression by every 
 means in their power ; for them it was a fight for existence. 
 But the result could never be for a moment in doubt. The 
 Company was forced to submit. Queen Victoria took over the 
 government of India, and by a stroke of the pen the Company 
 ceased to exist. The Company's " Governor-General became 
 the English Queen's Viceroy." 
 
 At a brilliant durbar held at Allahabad on November ist, 
 1858, Lord Canning read the proclamation by virtue of which 
 the Queen assumed all authority. " This document, which is in 
 the truest and noblest sense the Magna Charta of the Indian 
 people, proclaimed in eloquent words a policy of justice and 
 religious toleration ; and granted an amnesty to all except those 
 who had directly taken part in the murder of British subjects. 
 Peace was proclaimed throughout India on July 8th, 1859. In 
 the following cold weather Lord Canning made a viceregal 
 progress through the Northern Provinces, to receive the homage 
 of loyal princes and chiefs, and to guarantee them the right of 
 adoption" (Hunter, The Indian Empire, p. 495). 
 
 (c) After the Mutiny. 1 857-1 879 
 
 This period, and especially the first ten years after the 
 Mutiny, is the most brilliant era of England's dominion in India, 
 at any rate from the point of view that never before had so 
 many statesmen, at once endowed with the most distinguished 
 gifts and moved by the most sincere Christian convictions, 
 occupied the highest positions in the country. Sir John 
 Lawrence was Viceroy from i S64 to 1 869, Sir Robert Montgomery 
 and Sir Donald M'Leod were Lieutenant-Governors of the 
 Punjab. It was said that the last-named and a devout general, 
 Reynell Taylor, were the two Ferishtas (Angels) of India. " If 
 there were many Christians like M'Leod," said a Hindu, "there 
 would be no more Hindus and Muhammadans," The Governor 
 of Bombay was Sir Bartle Frere, the suppressor of the East 
 African slave trade. Sir William Muir, Lieutenant-Governor 
 of the North- Western Provinces, a great scholar and Arabist, 
 wrote a life of Muhammad in four volumes in order to help 
 14 
 
2IO HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the missionaries in their spiritual struggle with Islam, Other 
 notable officials were Robert Cust, the philologist, General 
 Edward Lake, Sir Richard Temple, Henry Ramsay, etc., all 
 men who used their influence, and most of them their wealth 
 also, to further the missionary cause. 
 
 Not only had the Mutiny shaken English rule to the depths 
 in India, and for the first time awakened in England a full 
 consciousness of the fact that India lay at the base of her world 
 dominion, it had also powerfully affected English Christendom, 
 and had kindled its sense of responsibility for the peoples of 
 India, To give India's millions the best they had, their 
 Christianity and the Christian culture based thereupon — this 
 was the sacred purpose with which the English Churches re- 
 turned to their missionary labours of love after the anxiety and 
 heartbreak of the Mutiny. In the two decades that followed 
 this mighty impulse was to work itself out. We can follow it 
 principally, — in spite of the fact that later on missionary zeal 
 greatly abated in England and that neither men nor funds were 
 to be obtained in sufficient quantities, in four great movements : 
 in the growth of the Church Missionary Society, of Methodist 
 missions, of Presbyterian missions, and of missions to women. 
 
 The Church Missionary Society had from the first taken 
 advantage of the great national impulses which decade after 
 decade swept over the English people, using them as levers for 
 promoting and deepening missionary interest. At this time 
 there came a twofold impulse to its hand. The great Christian 
 statesmen who had contributed so largely to the salvation of 
 India were almost all its friends in an especial manner and 
 supported its undertakings. And it was precisely the Punjab, 
 the province where more than half the population consisted of 
 fanatical Muhammadans, which had, under the expressly Christian 
 government of these very statesmen, not only remained loyal 
 during all the confusion of the Mutiny, but had even placed 
 regiments for its suppression at the disposal of the Government. 
 The contention, repeated ad nauseam, that a pronounced 
 Christian attitude of the Government would drive the races of 
 India into revolt, and w'ould especially embitter the Muham- 
 madans, was crushingly refuted by the facts of the case. On 
 the contrary, wherever the slightest consideration had been 
 shown to the prejudices of the Hindus and the Muhammadans, 
 black hate and revolt had been their thanks; but where 
 Christianity had been frankly and openly professed, millions of 
 Muhammadans were within less than ten years found to be 
 faithful and devoted subjects of the English Crown. And as 
 this fact was true for the whole country, so it was repeated in 
 many widely separated places in the most striking fashion. No 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 211 
 
 town was so notorious for its fanaticism as Peshawar, near the 
 Khyber Pass. An English Commissioner had declared there 
 that so long as he had anything to say in the matter no 
 missionary should cross the Indus. A short time afterwards 
 this same individual was stabbed by an Afghan on the verandah 
 of his house. His successor, Sir Herbert Edwardes, began his 
 official activity in the very house, the verandah pillars of which 
 were still splashed with the dead man's blood, by founding an 
 evangelical mission for the town ; and he established peace 
 and quiet in the place. 
 
 So the Church Missionary Society, with the help of the 
 above-mentioned statesman, set about the extension of its 
 mission in the Punjab which had been commenced in 1852 
 under such favourable circumstances. In 1867 Lahore was 
 created a new centre for the mission, and with it Amritsar. 
 Along the western frontier of India, in the partly barren, partly 
 fruitful Derajat plains lying between the Indus and the con- 
 torted chain of the Sulaiman Mountains, stations were laid down 
 at Tank (1862), at Dera Ismail Khan (1868), at Dera Ghazi 
 Khan (1879), and at Pind Dadan Khan (1881). At Clarkabad 
 a great Christian settlement was established. At Srinagar, the 
 capital of Kashmir, a footing was obtained, but only after un- 
 speakable difficulties. The procedure followed in founding 
 these stations was for the most part the same : rich Englishmen 
 appealed to the Society on behalf of a certain town, they then 
 placed large sums of money at its disposal for the initial period 
 of its existence ; and sometimes they would even erect the 
 mission premises. 
 
 The immediate cause of the outbreak of the Mutiny had 
 been the annexation of the extremely wealthy kingdom of 
 Oudh by the English in 1856. Even before the Mutiny the 
 Church Missionary Society had planned the missionary 
 occupation of the land. After the Mutiny, they set to work 
 seriously. Lucknow, the theatre of the most splendid exploits 
 of the English, was the first station (1858), and Fyzabad (in 
 1862) the second. A few months before the outbreak of the 
 rebellion Dr. Butler had landed as the first apostle of a Church 
 hitherto unrepresented in India, the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church North of America. This Church also began after the 
 Mutiny to branch out in mission work on a scale and to an 
 extent scarcely dreamed of in India before. With almost 
 overwhelming rapidity it established two great groups of 
 stations, "the one in Oudh (1858, Lucknow; 1865, Gonda, 
 Sitapur, Hardoi ; 1866, Rae Bareli, Unao, Barabanki), the 
 other in the northern part of the United Provinces (1859, 
 Bareilly, Shahjahanpur, Jellalabad, Moradabad, Bijnor, 
 
2 12 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Amroha ; i860, Budain ; 1861, Pilibhit ; 1871, Fatehganj, 
 Cawnpore; 1 881, Agra, Fatehpur-Sikri ; 1885, Allahabad). But 
 it did not rest satisfied even with this vast reseaii of stations ; 
 with feverish haste one mission field after another was added 
 thereto: on the slopes of the Himalayas, Mussoorie (1864); 
 Naini Tal (1857); Pithoragarh (1874); in Rajputana, Ajmer, 
 in Sind, Karachi (1874) ; in Gujarat, Baroda (1888); in Central 
 India, Nagpur and Kampti (1876); in the Nizam's Dominions, 
 Hyderabad, Secunderabad (1873); Gulbarga (1874); in the 
 Kanarese country, Bellary (1876), Bangalore, Kolar (1876); on 
 the West Coast, Bombay, Mazagaon, Colaba, Poona (1872); in 
 the Tamil country, Madras (1874); in Bengal, Calcutta (1888), 
 Diamond Harbour, Asansol, Pakur ; in Bihar, Muzaffarpur, and 
 many other stations in almost every part of India, 
 
 During the first ten years of its work this Society devoted 
 all its energies (save in the United Provinces of North India) to 
 evangelistic work amongst Europeans and Eurasians, especially 
 in the person of the eloquent and enthusiastic Bishop William 
 Taylor, who was afterwards the " Missionary Bishop of Africa." 
 Later, however, it took up direct mission work, having a 
 particular liking for undertakings of a literary nature. Whilst 
 in 1856 the Society had not a single representative in India, in 
 1 88 1 it could point to thirty-two, and nine years later to sixty- 
 five ordained missionaries, and had thus taken precedence of 
 every society then working in India save one. But what a 
 difiference between it and the Basle Missionary Society, which 
 followed closely in its wake, and had sixty-one ordained 
 missionaries in the same year. In the German Society there 
 was systematic limitation to given districts with a uniform and 
 straightforward method of work ; whereas the Methodists 
 launched enterprises in every part and corner of the country, 
 sometimes recklessly intruding upon the spheres of labour of older 
 societies, yet still with consuming zeal, with great financial 
 resources, and at times under very capable leaders, such as, for 
 instance. Bishop Thoburn, his sister Miss Isabella Thoburn, 
 Bishop Parker, Dr. Scott, and others. 
 
 Up to the time of the Mutiny the English Wesleyan 
 Methodist Missionary Society had confined its energies to S. India 
 and Ceylon, and had taken a leading position in Mysore and 
 throughout Ceylon. After 1857 it held it to be its duty to take 
 a share also in the work in North India. There, however, it 
 did not look for any self-contained and limited field of labour, 
 but simply founded isolated stations: 1862, Calcutta; 1876, 
 Dum Dum and Barrackpore, suburbs of Calcutta; 1887, 
 Bankura; 1879, Raniganj and Benares ; 1872, Lucknow; 1880, 
 Fyzabad. Whether the dispersion of these stations over so 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 213 
 
 large an area and amid such widely different racial conditions 
 is advantageous to the work appears to us doubtful. 
 
 A third noteworthy feature of missionary work after the 
 Mutiny is the advent of a large number of Presbyterian 
 workers, even though the individual missions were but small. 
 We have already mentioned that the American Presbyterians 
 had laid down an important chain of stations from Allahabad 
 in the south-west to Rawalpindi in the north-west, straight 
 through the United Provinces and the Punjab ; also that in 
 1855 the Church of Scotland and the American United 
 Presbyterians had settled down in cordial unity in the north of 
 the Punjab, in the Sialkot, Wazirabad, Gujarat, and Gujranwala 
 districts. These older missions were consolidated and extended 
 by the establishment of new stations. In 1870 the Church of 
 Scotland opened a new mission at Darjeeling, and Kalimpong 
 (1873), which is especially interesting because of the fact that 
 the expense of each separate missionary department was 
 borne by different church guilds. Likewise there now came 
 fresh to the field — another thank-offering for the rescue of India 
 from the stress of the Mutiny — the Irish Presbyterians, who 
 began a stiff and wearisome task on the very hard soil of 
 Rajputana (Beawar, i860; Nasirabad, Ashapura, Todgarh, 
 1 861 ; Ajmer, 1862; Jaipur, 1866; Deoli, 1871 ; Udaipur, 1878 ; 
 Alwar, 1880; Jodhpur, 1887). 
 
 In 1877 the Canadian Presbyterians started work on the 
 still virgin soil of the Protected States of Central India (1877, 
 Indore, Mhow, Ujjain ; 1885, Nimach ; 1886, Ratlam). Small 
 plants were laid down by the English Presbyterians at their one 
 station of Rampur Boalia in Bengal (1862), and by the Scotch 
 Original Seceders at Chaupara (1872), later at Seoni in the 
 Central Provinces. 
 
 Of new societies, there still remain to be mentioned the 
 Danish Missionary Society which, after the troubles of the 
 Ochsian caste dispute, settled in the Tamil country in 1861, 
 and occupied a sphere of influence, principally to the west of 
 Cuddalore ; the Hermannsburg Society in the south Telugu 
 districts (1864, Salurpetta ; 1865, Nayudupetta; 1867, Gudur, 
 Rapur; 1870, Vakadu, Venkatagiri ; 1873, Kalahasti ; 1877, 
 Tirupati ; 1883, Kodur) ; the German Protestant Synod of 
 North America in the north-east corner of the Central 
 Provinces, on the Upper Mahanuddy (1868, Bisrampur ; 1871, 
 Raipur) ; the English Quakers (Society of Friends) in the 
 Nerbudda Valley (1876, Hoshangabad, Sohagpore) ; the 
 Swedish Protestant National Society, also in Central India, 
 from 1878, and two Canadian Baptist Missionary Societies 
 (founded in 1874 and 1875, the one by the Baptists of Quebec 
 
2 14 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and Ontario, the other by the Baptists of the Canadian Mari- 
 time States), which laboured in the northern Telugu districts at 
 Coconada, BimHpatam, and other places. 
 
 Of special interest is the inauguration of women's missionary- 
 societies, which undertake more particularly the work amongst 
 the women of India by means of boarding schools and day 
 schools, infirmaries and hospitals, and zenana visiting. We 
 pass over them at this stage, however, in order to trace their 
 development in a more connected fashion later. 
 
 As the number of missionaries thus rapidly increased and 
 missionary activity developed, the need for mutual counsel in 
 general missionary conferences became more and more evident. 
 In 1855 the first of these was held in Calcutta for the province 
 of Bengal, the second at Benares in 1857 for the North-Western 
 Provinces, the third at Ootacamund for Southern India in 1858, 
 and the fourth at Lahore in 1862 for the Punjab. These local 
 conferences were the precursors of the first General Indian 
 Missionary Conference, which took place in Allahabad in 
 1872, and was attended by 136 missionaries. Then came a 
 special South India Missionary Conference at Bangalore in 
 1879, which has become famous owing to the importance of 
 the business then transacted. These missionary conferences 
 gradually became a great power in Indian missionary life ; 
 the ripest missionary experience has found expression in 
 their transactions. Many of the addresses then given are 
 even now well worthy of being read.^ 
 
 During this period there was a great tendency to focus 
 missionary work particularly on the so-called " aborigines." 
 This name was given on the one hand to the whole of the 
 tribes in Western Bengal and the Central Provinces — whose 
 name of Kolarian is both misleading and without ethnological 
 foundation, and on the other hand to those Dravidian peoples 
 and tribes who, when the greater Dravidian races were 
 Hinduised, remained in their mountain fastnesses and primeval 
 forests, and who were, comparatively speaking, in a very inferior 
 state of civilisation. For a long time all kinds of attempts had 
 been made to carry the gospel to these casteless tribes. In 
 Travancore, Alexio de Menezes had sent evangelists as early 
 as 1599 to the Arajers of the hill country — at that time called 
 Malleans. In 1848 Rev. Henry Baker, an English missionary, 
 revived this old-time undertaking and founded amongst the 
 Arajers, or Arriers, the station of Mundakajam. On the Blue 
 Mountains, where countless remnants of the most widely 
 
 1 The report of the Benares Conference (1857) was destroyed in the Mutiny of the 
 same year, but complete reports of all other conferences are obtainable ; tliat of the 
 Allahabad Conference is a volume of 548 pages. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 215 
 
 different tribes live as near neighbours, the Basle missionary, 
 Metz (from 1850 onwards), had shepherded the Todas and 
 Kotas, the Irulers and the Kurumbans, traversing precipitous 
 mountains, toiling through the hot passes in the hills, crossing 
 bridgeless torrents and trackless scrub. In 1850 another 
 German missionary, Drose, of the Church Missionary Society, 
 had tried from Bhagalpur on the Ganges to gain access to the 
 Paharias.i However, as these tribes inhabit pathless primeval 
 forests or clefts in the hills at once fever-haunted and most 
 difficult of approach, the work amongst them had everywhere 
 come to a standstill. It was at this point that the great success 
 of the mission to the Kols attracted the attention of missionary 
 circles at home. Whereas this mission in 185 1 had only 
 numbered 31 baptized adherents, and in 1861 2400, in 1871 
 it had swollen to 20,727, and in 1881 to the very large number 
 of 44,084. At the time of the unfortunate crisis of 1868, when 
 public opinion in India took sides passionately either with the 
 missionaries who had remained faithful to the leadership of 
 Gossner or with those who had gone over to the Anglicans, 
 the K61 Mission and its rapid growth was in everybody's mouth. 
 People realised that similar conditions to those prevailing 
 amongst the Kols were to be expected in the case of many 
 other aboriginal tribes and that it was still perhaps both 
 possible and relatively easy to save them from the rapid 
 onward march of Hinduism and to gather them into the 
 Christian Church. So the Society for the Propagation of 
 the Gospel embarked blindly on work among the Kols, ap- 
 propriated at least one-third of the success of the Gossner 
 Mission, and established itself in this most promising mission 
 field. Apart from the K61 missions, interest centred most 
 round the two other strongest aboriginal peoples, the Santals 
 in Bengal and the Gonds in the Central Provinces. Taking 
 Taljhari as their starting-point, the Church Missionary Society 
 began to work amongst the Santals in i860, and in their well- 
 known systematic way they covered the north of the Santal 
 district with a network of stations. They were followed in 
 1867 by the two Scandinavians, Skrefsrud and Borresen, who, 
 under the name of the " Indian Home Mission," initiated the 
 work which has since become so famous. In the year 1870 the 
 Scotch Free Church began work in the south-west of the district 
 (Pachamba, 1870; Tundi, in the district of Manbhum, 1879). 
 In 1872 Cornelius, formerly a Swedish sailor, left the Indian 
 Home Mission and founded a little cause independently at 
 Jamtara, with which at a later period the Plymouth Brethren 
 associated themselves. In 1875, A. Hagert, who had formerly 
 ' Paharias, i.e. mountain people. Their Dravidian tongue is called Malto, 
 
2i6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MJSSIONS 
 
 been a hotel waiter, joined this work, and with some friends 
 founded the stations of Bethel, Bethlehem, Bethany, and 
 Bethesda. 
 
 To reach the Gonds of the Central Provinces had been 
 the intention of the Church Missionary Society when in 1854 
 they founded the station of Jubbulpore (near the Upper Nar- 
 bada) ; but Jubbulpore turned out to be an unsuitable working 
 centre, no matter how hard the missionaries located there 
 strove to get into touch with the Gonds. We have already 
 mentioned the unfortunate first attempt of Gossner's mission- 
 aries in 1 84 1. In 1866 the Free Church of Scotland, from its 
 Central Indian station of Nagpur, made a forward move into 
 Gondwana (the primeval forest district of the Gonds) and 
 established, fifteen miles north of Nagpur, the station of 
 Chhindwara, which was, however, made over to the Swedish 
 Protestant National Society in 1885 on account of its lack of 
 success. The last-named Society had undertaken in 1878 the 
 work which we described above solely in order to evangelise 
 the Gonds ; it also turned its attention to other small hill tribes 
 of that region, especially the Kurkus, who were nearly related 
 to the Kols of Chota Nagpur. Its stations, Sagar (1878), 
 Bethyl (1880), Chhindwara, received from the Free Church of 
 Scotland (1885), Nimpani near Bethul (1886), and Amarwara 
 (1888), were all at any rate founded as Gond stations, even 
 though work was everywhere carried on amongst the Hindus 
 by whom the missionaries were more immediately surrounded. 
 In 1874 the American Methodist, Norton, a devout but fanatical 
 free lance, came into this part of the world and settled first at 
 Ellichpur, and afterwards at Baesdehi ; he worked principally 
 among the Kurkus. Other unattached missionaries also 
 laboured in these remote regions. In 1879 the Church 
 Missionary Society crossed right over into the Gond territory 
 and founded its first station at Mandla, to which a second was 
 added in 1891, Marpha. 
 
 After the Santal Kols, and the Kurku Gonds, the largest 
 compact mass of non-Hinduised aborigines is to be found in 
 Assam. They do not, however, like those of the rest of India, 
 belong to the Dravido - Kolarian stock, but are akin by a 
 highly complicated ethnological and linguistic relationship to 
 the scattered family of Tibeto-Mongolian peoples. The 
 American Baptists, who in 1841 had taken up work in the 
 humid valley of the Brahmaputra, now set their heart upon 
 the broad highlands which hemmed in the deep river valley 
 towards the south, and upon which there was to be found a 
 dense but strangely mixed population of aboriginal tribes ; they 
 worked principally amongst the Garos. Side by side with them 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 217 
 
 laboured the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, who had located 
 their first station at Cherrapunji, also in 1841, and who now 
 gave themselves entirely up to work amongst the Khasias, 
 the Jains, and kindred populations ; in quick succession they 
 founded a number of new stations amongst the hill folk : 
 Jowai (1886), Shillong (1870), Sheila (1871), Shangpung (1879), 
 Mawphlang (1878), etc. 
 
 In the year 1880 the Church Missionary Society, by the 
 desire and at the expense of a subsequent bishop, Bickersteth, 
 established the station of Kherwara amongst the Bhils, a hill 
 tribe in Rajputana, where that most devoted missionary, Rev. 
 C. S. Thompson, laboured with great self-sacrifice for twenty 
 years — until cholera carried him off. When the splendid water- 
 works were constructed on the Godavari which were destined to 
 transform the barren plains near the mouth of that great river 
 into waving and fruitful rice plains, the earnest Christian 
 directors of the works, Sir A. Cotton and the future General 
 Haigh, came into contact with the Kois, a shy people and one 
 nearly related to the Gonds, and persuaded the Church Mission- 
 ary Society in i860 to build a Koi station at Dummagudem, on 
 the Godavari. 
 
 In the early sixties the General Baptists in Orissa attempted, 
 from their station of Berhampur, to reach the wild " Kandhs," 
 i.e. mountain people, notorious for their human sacrifices, and 
 with this end in view they occupied Russelkonda. In the year 
 1863, Rev. W. L.Jones, a self-denying missionary of the London 
 Missionary Society, settled at Dudhi in the Singrowli district, 
 south of Benares, and worked with the most untiring kindliness 
 amongst the depraved and timid peoples of the forest, until in 
 1870 he was carried off by jungle fever. His work was con- 
 tinued only in a feeble fashion. 
 
 Such are the more important attempts that have been made 
 up and down in the forest wilds of India to carry the gospel to 
 the scattered aborigines. The deadly fever of the Indian forests, 
 the entire absence of paths, and the inaccessibility of the 
 villages in the midst of the woods, the timidity of the aborigines, 
 who for centuries past have shrunk from any contact whatsoever 
 with civilisation, their linguistic and tribal differences, and 
 likewise the fact that India offers elsewhere far easier and more 
 attractive openings for missionary work, have all combined to 
 hinder the greater part of these efforts from developing into a 
 real success. Apart from the K61 and Santal missions, they 
 merely form an episode in the history of Indian missions. 
 
 Famines are unfortunately a regular calamity in India, and 
 in this period one succeeded another with painful rapidity. 
 Happily most of them drew only parts of India into this 
 
2i8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 fellowship of suffering. Thus the famine of 1 860-1861 visited 
 only the northern Ganges Doab and Rohilkhand : by that in 
 1866 a million people were cut off in Orissa ; that of 1868 swept 
 over Jhansi and Rajputana ; that of 1874 over Bengal, Bihar, and 
 Bundelkhand. But the terrible famine of 1876- 1879 was more 
 or less felt throughout all the north and east of the peninsula. 
 In far-off Kashmir whole villages were depopulated, and the 
 missionaries found everywhere uninterred corpses — on the banks 
 of rivers, in the streets, under the trees. But the districts which 
 felt the famine far more severely than any others were the 
 Telugu and Tamil countries. Here hundreds of thousands died. 
 The Government made tremendous efforts to feed the hungry 
 and to supply those who could still perform it with paid work. 
 Missions went hand in hand with the Government, organising 
 help on a large scale. Especially did the American Baptist 
 missionary. Rev. J. Everett Clough, distinguish himself as much 
 by his practical ability as by his helpful philanthropy. He 
 obtained sole responsibility for three miles of the Buckingham 
 Canal, which had been begun as a famine work, and which was 
 to unite Madras with the Kistna Estuary (Bezwada), and with 
 the sole help of his teachers and catechists he was able to 
 terminate this enormous task to the entire satisfaction of the 
 authorities. In this way he was able to give paid employment 
 to thousands of natives. 
 
 To an extent never known before, the Hindus came to 
 perceive that the missionaries meant well by them, and still 
 more, that connection with the Christian community in such 
 seasons of distress was the best protection, and afforded the 
 safest prospect of help for those of the lower castes or of no 
 caste at all. It thus came about that when the famine ceased — 
 as a matter of principle none had been baptized during its 
 actual duration — vast numbers of the people went over to 
 Christianity. In three days (July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, 1878) in the 
 Ongole Mission 3536 adults were baptized, and before the end 
 of the year the total had increased to 9606; in 1880,2757 
 additional ones were added ; and in 1881, 2000 more. It is 
 only right to acknowledge that since 1870 a good work had 
 been going on in this mission ; nearly every annual report had 
 told of local revivals. But it was the famine which first gave 
 the decisive impetus to this mass movement. Equally large 
 were the accessions to the two Anglican missions in Tinnevelly. 
 In the year 1880 they reported no less than 19,000 new 
 members, though they were considerably more cautious in 
 administering baptism than were the Baptists in the Telugu 
 country. Almost all the other societies in the Telugu and 
 Tamil countries shared more or less in this mass movement, 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 219 
 
 and the results were so large that the whole numerical pro- 
 portions of Indian missions were not a little disturbed. 
 
 The grand total of native Christians in 185 1 was 91,092; in 
 the following decade it had grown to 138,731 (an increase of 
 47,639, or 51 per cent.); by 1871 it reached 224,258 (an increase 
 of 85,527, or 61 per cent); in 1881 it stood at 417,372 (an 
 increase of 193,214, or 86 per cent, and 4^ times as many as 
 in 1851). 
 
 The increase was made up as follows : — 
 
 1851. 1S61. 1871. 18S1. 
 
 n the Bengal Presidency . 
 
 14,177 
 
 20,518 
 
 46,968 
 
 83,583 
 
 Of these : Kols alone 
 
 51 
 
 2,400 
 
 20,727 
 
 50,367 
 
 ,, Santals alone . 
 
 
 
 905 
 
 5,431 
 
 n the Madras Presidency . 
 
 74,176 
 
 110,078 
 
 160,955 
 
 299,742 
 
 Of these : in Travancore and^ 
 Cochin j 
 
 21,179 
 
 30,607 
 
 46,285 
 
 59,959 
 
 ,, in Tinnevelly 
 
 34,90s 
 
 49,964 
 
 58,167 
 
 95,624 
 
 The last-mentioned missions-fields alone contributed in 1851 
 7/9, in 1861 8/1 1, and in 1871 3/5, of the entire numerical 
 returns for this Presidency, and even in 1881 one half, or, 
 in round numbers, 150,000 out of 300,000. Of the other half 
 there were claimed — 
 
 By the American Baptists in Telugu Land . 52,316 
 
 By the L.M.S. in Telugu Land . . . 6,331 
 
 By the C.M.S. „„.... 5,124 
 
 By the American Lutheran Mission at Guntur 7,988 
 
 A total of 71,759, 
 
 or, with the addition of lesser Telugu missions, 77,041 ; that is, 
 more than half of the 1 50,000 remaining, after the subtraction of 
 the numbers for Travancore, Cochin, and Tinnevelly, were 
 contributed by the Nellore, Cuddapah, Godavari, and Vizaga- 
 patam districts of the Telugu country. These same districts 
 had been credited during the decade commencing 1871 with a 
 sum total of only 15,393 Christians; they had thus increased 
 fivefold. 
 
 4. Missions in India To-Day (from 1880) 
 
 In the winter of 1 875-1 876, King Edward VII. of England, at 
 that time Prince of Wales, paid a visit to this the greatest of 
 British pos.sessions, in order to obtain a knowledge of it by 
 personal acquaintance. His journey was a brilliant triumphal 
 
2 20 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 procession through the country ; princes and peoples vied with 
 one another in the attempt to express their devotion with true 
 Oriental exuberance. Although warm friends of missions like 
 Sir Bartle Frere and Canon ■-Duckworth were in immediate 
 attendance upon the Prince, yet hyper-cautious Anglo-Indian 
 statesmen saw to it that he was kept at a safe distance from 
 contact with the native Christians. Only twice, at Tinnevelly in 
 the south and at Amritsar in the north, did he receive an official 
 welcome on the part of the Christians. Two years later, on 
 January ist, 1877, Queen Victoria assumed the title of Empress 
 of India. Strangely enough, it was precisely in English 
 missionary circles that this step was greatly disapproved. 
 Nevertheless, we cannot but recognise that it was in harmony 
 with public opinion, because the new title was soon accepted 
 throughout India. 
 
 It is no light matter to portray these modern days, in the 
 midst of whose tumult we ourselves stand, with the same sureness 
 of touch as we felt when describing the periods of missionary 
 history now closed. Yet there are a number of striking features 
 which force themselves upon the notice of the observer. 
 
 In the first place, there is the general remark that in the 
 last quarter of a century Indian missions have made rapid 
 progress, especially with regard to the number of foreigners 
 engaged in them. The number of ordained missionaries ^ has 
 increased from 586 in 1881 to 976 in 1900, i.e. an increase of 
 390 in a trifle less than twenty years (whereas, for example, in 
 the two previous decades, i86i-i88r, there had been only an 
 increase of 107). In addition to this, the number of women 
 missionaries has gone up from 479 in 1881 to 1174 in 1900; i.e. 
 by 695, or 2| times as many. An almost entirely new phase 
 of the question is presented by the appearance of 265 male or 
 female medical missionaries. Later on we shall consider in 
 detail this question oi personnel. 
 
 Those missionary societies which have already been a long 
 time in the field have derived far and away the greatest 
 benefit from this increase. Thus the staff of the Church 
 Missionary Society has risen from 95 ordained and 13 lay 
 missionaries in 1 881, to 167 ordained and 43 lay missionaries 
 (including 16 medicals) in 1904; within the last twenty-five 
 years, therefore, the number has more than doubled. It has been 
 further of much importance to the Church Missionary Society to 
 have an independent auxiliary society at its side, viz. the 
 Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (in missionary 
 parlance the C.E.Z.M.S.), which came into being in 1881. Few 
 societies have during this period made such wonderful progress 
 ^ In India alone, not including Burma or Ceylon. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 221 
 
 as this greatest of all evangelical missionary societies ; but all of 
 them have grown, and to a greater or less degree this increase 
 has everywhere turned to the advantage of Indian missions. 
 
 Alongside the older societies there have come into the field 
 a positively bewildering number of new missionary organisations, 
 to such an extent that this immense multiplication of missionary 
 effort has come to be another characteristic feature of the period 
 under discussion. Through its commerce with all countries 
 India has been brought nearer to the Christianity of the West ; 
 the conditions of life throughout the whole country, as regards 
 personal safety, railway, postal and telegraphic means of com- 
 munication, even in the remotest mountain villages, are com- 
 paratively so favourable for Europeans — even for single ladies 
 — and British rule has on the whole created such remark- 
 ably tempting opportunities for missionary work, that it would 
 be hard to find any land possessing so great an attraction 
 for the missionary societies which have sprung up from every 
 quarter of Anglo-Saxon Christendom like so many mushrooms. 
 And it is right that it should be so ; for historically considered 
 it cannot be doubted that the evangelising and Christianising of 
 India is the greatest duty of the Anglo-Saxon race, a duty for 
 the very purpose of which that imperial gem has been entrusted 
 to the English people. Yet we cannot help thinking that the 
 Anglo-Saxons, with their pronounced spirit of independence, 
 are in danger of aimlessly scattering their energies on countless 
 toy missions instead of grappling with the mighty task in serried 
 strength. 
 
 Amongst the missionary bodies that have come upon the 
 scene during this period there are but few missionary societies 
 of the old style. In our opinion the most important of these is 
 the Schleswig-HolsteinMissionarySociety(i88i). In 1883 its first 
 station was founded at Salur, in the northern Telugu country ; 
 Koraput followed in 1883; and in 1884 Kotapad and Jeypore 
 in the neighbouring protected state of Jeypore. It already 
 numbers more than 7000 Christians and 2000 candidates for 
 baptism. With its systematic work it is, in spite of immense 
 climatic and linguistic difficulties, a standing example of the 
 great success which attends wisely directed operations in India 
 even though they are backed up by but limited funds — whilst 
 numberless other societies possessed of as great or greater means 
 have not yet got beyond the experimental and elementary stage. 
 
 In amongst the various Baptist societies which cluster round 
 the entire rim of the Bay of Bengal, from Madras in the west 
 to Rangoon and Tavoy in the east — the greatest continuous 
 missionary field of societies to all intents and purposes identical 
 which India has to show — there have now stepped in to work 
 
2 22 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 hand in hand with the English Baptists in East Bengal a 
 number of Baptist missionary organisations from almost every 
 Australasian colony, all of them, unfortunately, independent one 
 of another: in 1882, the South Australian Baptists; in 1885, the 
 Baptists of Victoria, Queensland, New Zealand, and New South 
 Wales; in 1887, those of Tasmania. On the other hand, the 
 Danish American Baptists, or so-called Tunkers,^ commenced a 
 small cause at Gujarat, in the district of Surat and Broach. 
 
 In 1894 some young missionaries separated themselves, on 
 dogmatic and other grounds, from the Leipzig Tamil Mission, 
 and went to assist the Missouri Society from North America. 
 The latter made the most of its opportunity, and established in 
 the N.-W. Tamil country a mission of its own : Krishnagiri 
 (1895), Ambur (1896), Vaniyambadi (1897), and Barugur (1898). 
 The Disciples of Christ, or Campbellites, from North America, 
 began in 1882 a new mission (Bilaspur, Mungeli, etc.), in the 
 eastern part of the Central Provinces, close to the district 
 served by the German Evangelical Synod. In the same neigh- 
 bourhood there have settled two closely connected branches of 
 the Mennonites, and at the same time founded several stations 
 in Chattisghar. 
 
 A new and wholly unique feature in Indian missions is 
 afforded by the appearance of various High Church ritualistic 
 brotherhoods, which for the most part observe the Benedictine 
 rule of voluntary celibacy and community of goods, and have 
 chosen the large towns and commercial centres as their sphere 
 of activity. The semi-Catholic order of the " Cowley Fathers," 
 or the Society of St. John the Evangelist, had been in existence 
 since the year 1865 ; in 1870 it extended its operations to India 
 and created missionary bases in Poona and Bombay. Hand 
 in hand with it in Bombay works the Sisterhood of All Saints, 
 in Poona the Sisterhood of St. Mary, Wantage. In allusion 
 to their Poona establishment they have been familiarly called 
 " The Panch Howds Mission " ! The Cambridge Mission was 
 founded by graduates of the University of Cambridge at Delhi 
 in the year 1877, and it has taken over and extended the work of 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in that city — a 
 work that had been going on since 1854. On January 6th, 1881, 
 the Oxford Brotherhood of the Epiphany began work in 
 Calcutta, more especially amongst those Bengali babus who had 
 received an English training. In 1892 the Dublin University 
 Mission was established at Hazaribagh, in Chota Nagpur, and 
 began to work hand in hand with the small High Anglican 
 Mission to the Kols. In 1896, without special connection with 
 
 ^ The General Missionary Committee of the German Baptist Brethren Church 
 (the Dunkards). 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 223 
 
 any particular University, a fifth missionary Brotherhood was 
 founded in Cawnpore, more especially by the family of Bishop 
 Westcott, the eminent new Testament commentator; this 
 Brotherhood identified itself with the work of the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel as closely as that in Delhi had done, 
 and like it eventually assumed direction of the S.P.G. work at 
 Cawnpore — which had been commenced in 1833. 
 
 With sound of cymbals and in its customary self-advertising 
 fashion the Salvation Army first put in an appearance in India 
 in 1883. The Calcutta police endeavoured to put a stop to 
 their spectacular processions ; but no less a personage than 
 Chunder Sen, the apostle of the Brahmo Samaj, made an 
 appeal for the freedom granted to every religious community 
 in India to exercise its religion according to its own accustomed 
 forms, and established the point that freedom of action should 
 be granted to the Salvation Army. " Major " Tucker was im- 
 prisoned for a month in Bombay, but there also the police were 
 compelled to give way. The Salvation Army was thus enabled 
 to proceed unhindered with its plan of " taking India by storm, 
 after the Churches with their drowsy methods had well-nigh 
 fallen asleep." It laid itself out to attract attention. Its 
 representatives adopted the scanty dress of the Indian fakir, 
 and often tramped barefoot and with great self-denial through 
 the land ; but they proselytised most ruthlessly amongst the 
 already existing Christian communities and sent exaggerated 
 accounts of their victories to the homeland. Nevertheless, in 
 spite of many competent leaders and much devotion, they were 
 ere long destined to find out that nothing can be accomplished 
 in India by " zeal not according to knowledge," and that incon- 
 siderate judgments upon, and intermeddling with other missions 
 only result in injury to the great object upon which all eyes are 
 set. Although they claimed to " have accomplished more as 
 fakirs in one year than all the missionaries as sahibs had done 
 in fifty," the number of their adherents, according to the official 
 census returns, only reached 1138 in 1890 and 18,847 in 1901 — 
 of whom 7569 were in South India, and of the latter number 
 only 2537 were " soldiers." 
 
 In 1887 the International Christian Alliance began its work 
 in India, likewise with much parade. It established itself in 
 Berar, where for the past fifteen years various unattached 
 missionaries had laboured more or less temporarily. Many of 
 these were enrolled in the free-and-easy organisation of the 
 Alliance, which now promised with fifty missionaries to evan- 
 gelise the whole of Berar and its three million inhabitants 
 within five years. How little has come of it ! There are, it is 
 true, eight stations in the north of Berar, four in the west in the 
 
2 24 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 adjacent district of Khandesh, and five others in Gujarat. 
 In Bombay, the entrance gate to its domain, are its head- 
 quarters, called the Beracha Home (" Home of Blessing "). 
 The Alliance can thus in point of fact lay claim to eighteen 
 stations ; but most of them are small, and the numerical results 
 in 1 90 1 — after fourteen years' work — were, according to its 
 own reports, 1308 adherents, or, according to the Missionary 
 Census, 1700. 
 
 We have already pointed out that North Berar, with its 
 fairly large but scattered aboriginal population, is a favourite 
 field for unattached missionaries. It was here that the 
 American Methodist, A. Norton, settled, first in Ellichpur, and 
 afterwards at Baesdehi. At Basim Miss Drake laboured from 
 1879 onwards, attracting many other young ladies to the work, 
 such as e.g. the devoted Miss Wheeler. Andrew Fuller under- 
 took preaching tours in this neighbourhood. In connection 
 with this sporadic pioneer work is the Kurku and Central 
 Indian Hill Mission, constituted in London in 1890, which 
 commenced work at Ellichpur, and in time was able to 
 establish four other stations. 
 
 If in the two last-named organisations there is scarcely a 
 question of any central governing authority, still less shall we 
 find the slightest trace of such in the case of the loose con- 
 glomerate of missionaries who call themselves " Open Brethren," 
 or simply " Christians," and who belong ecclesiastically to the 
 " Plymouth Brethren," or the Darbyites. They occupy three 
 principal spheres of influence and a number of isolated posts. 
 Their oldest mission field, the Godavari delta, was occupied 
 in 1857 at the instigation of an unattached missionary named 
 Anthony Groves ; here the two pioneers, C. H. Beer and E. S. 
 Bowden, together with members of their families, have laboured 
 quietly and faithfully for the whole of the past half-century. 
 During the last ten years they have been joined by many 
 missionaries and still more lady missionaries : their stations are 
 Narsapur, Chittapetta, Amalapuram, Dowlaishvaram, Banda- 
 rulanka, and Tatipaka. Their second group of workers is 
 associated with the unattached mission founded in 1872 at 
 Jamtara (Santalia) by Cornelius, the converted barman ; and 
 here they have obtained a solid footing in Maijam, Kharmatar, 
 Sagjuria, Kadhar, and Banka; each station is a self-contained 
 " Christian Mission." The third and larger group of stations 
 is situated in the south of the Mysore; it includes Collegal, 
 Kamageri, Malvalli, Talkad, Gunjur, and we ought also to 
 add Coimbatore, in the Tamil country, where Bird, a Darbyite 
 gospeller, is located. Among this loose confederacy are further 
 the "Christian Missions" of Solapuram (since 1888 at Tinne- 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 225 
 
 velly; with it is closely connected the unattached mission of 
 the enthusiastic Tamil Arulappen at Christianpetta), Belgaum 
 (1891), Sulga (1901), Parur (near Shoranur, 1897), and Kunnan- 
 kulam (in Cochin, 1903). The Open Brethren have a joint 
 magazine, Echoes of the Service, through whose instrument- 
 ality the gifts of friends of the missions are conveyed to them. 
 Every member of their staff is a " faith " missionary ; i.e., apart 
 from any private means he may have, he is dependent on the 
 promiscuous gifts which his reports may bring in. This system 
 generally involves great privations. 
 
 In addition to those just named, the number of actually 
 unattached missionaries, or, as they now prefer to term them- 
 selves, " faith missionaries," is so large that to avoid confusion 
 we must enumerate them according to provinces. In Bengal 
 we find the " Chinsurah and Hooghly Zenana Mission" (1875), 
 where Miss Raikes carries on her school and zenana work. 
 At Howrah, a well-known suburb of Calcutta, a Zenana Mission 
 was founded in 1900 by the " VVeinbrennerians," or " Church of 
 God," a sect established by J. Weinbrenner in 1830. In 
 Ranaghat, the district adjacent to the Church Missionary 
 Society's centre at Krishnagar, a splendid medical mission was 
 started in 1893 by Jas. Monro, a former chief of the London 
 police ; this is for the most part worked by members and friends 
 of his family at their own charges. This independent mission 
 was affiliated to the Church Missionary Society on January 
 1st, 1906. In 1899 an " Indian Baptist Missionary Society " was 
 founded in Bengal, which laboured in Eastern Bengal and the 
 United Provinces by means of native helpers. On the northern 
 frontier of Bengal the Tibetan Pioneer Mission, practically 
 carried on by Miss Annie Taylor, for she has been deserted by 
 almost all her colleagues, is busily seeking to force an entrance 
 into Tibet. Not far away, at Ghoom, near Darjeeling, the 
 " Himalayan Branch of the American and Scandinavian 
 Alliance" has located itself (1895) ^^'^^ carries on evangelistic 
 work among Tibetans and Gurkhas. Darjeeling is the head- 
 quarters of the " Nepal Mission " of Mr. and Mrs. Innes Wright, 
 who are seeking to find an entrance to the still closed mountain 
 districts of Nepal. At Jamalpore in Bengal lives the secretary 
 of the "Indian Railway Mission" (1898), which works among 
 railway officials and employees, though rather among Europeans 
 and Eurasians than among the Hindus. In the western division 
 of Bengal, Bihar, the " Regions Beyond Mission," founded in 1899 
 by Dr. Grattan Guinness of London, has located itself at Motihari. 
 At Saripat Purunia (not to be confused wnth Purulid), in the 
 Bankura district of Bengal, several unattached missionaries, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Zook, Mr. and Mrs. Martin, Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 15 
 
220 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Sparrow, have founded the " Premananda Faith Orphanage," 
 and seven miles farther west they have opened at Raghunathpur, 
 in the Manbhum district, the " Hephzibah EvangeHstic Mission " 
 (1902). They are connected with the " American Brethren in 
 Christ." In the low-lying plain of Eastern Bengal the " Bengal 
 Evangelical Mission " has been at work since 1874 at Gopalganj ; 
 this was founded by the converted Bengali, Mathura Nath 
 Bose, and since his death in 1901 has been carried on by other 
 native workers. In Assam there originated in 1891 the 
 " Assam Frontier Pioneer Mission," which carries on work 
 among the Abors, a mountain tribe, among whom at Sadija 
 the two unattached missionaries, Lorrain and Savage, both 
 originally sent out by Mr. Arthington, took up their quarters. 
 From 1889 R. Arthington carried on a mission in the same 
 neighbourhood at his own cost amongst another of the hill 
 tribes, through a number of missionaries whom he had sent out. 
 At the death of this generous man (1900) the English Baptist 
 Missionary Society united these scattered mission posts under 
 the name of the " Arthington Missions." 
 
 In the Tamil country the American Adventists located them- 
 selves in 1 882 at Madras, alongside the multiple missionary organ- 
 isations already at work in that city. Also at Madras we find 
 the " South Indian Railway Mission," which seeks to spread 
 the gospel by distributing books and tracts in the trains which 
 are ever crowded with Tamils. Af Panruti, near Cuddalore, 
 the "South Arcot Highways and Hedges Mission" of Miss 
 F, M. Reade has been in existence since 1875. In the west 
 Tamil country the " Ceylon and Indian General Mission," founded 
 in 1894, carries on work at Coimbatore, Coonoor, Bangalore, 
 and other places, both amongst the very numerous Eurasians 
 and the Hindus. At Ootacamund, on the Nilgiri Hills, the 
 former Danish missionary, Koefoed, has maintained an 
 independent work since 1892, In the same neighbourhood a 
 Mr. J. A. Samuel, probably a converted Tamil or a Eurasian, has 
 founded a " Nilgiri Evangelistic Mission" (1894) to evangelise 
 the Nilgiri hill tribes or the Tamil coolies. At Travancore 
 a Mr. Gregson has laboured since the year 1900, and has had 
 no inconsiderable success {Echoes of Service, 1903, p. Gj^. 
 
 In Berar and the adjoining Central Provinces the following 
 bodies are at work, in addition to those that have been already 
 mentioned: The "Pentecostal Mission," since 1898 at Buldana 
 (Berar) ; the " American Mennonites," also since 1 898 at Dhamtari 
 (Central Provinces); and the " Balaghat Mission," since 1894 at 
 Baihair, in the Balaghat District (Central Provinces). In Poona 
 and the neighbourhood, the " Poona and India Village Mission," 
 founded by a New Zealander, Mr. Reeve, in 1893, 's most busily 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 227 
 
 engas^ed ; in 1901 this mission employed eighteen evangelists and 
 twehe women missionaries, mostly from Australia, and carried 
 on extensive itinerant preaching. In Bombay, Toona, and the 
 neighbouring Khedgaon the Brahman widow, Pandita Ramabai, 
 has since 1899 carried on her richly blessed work amongst 
 the widows of India, especially those of the higher classes, 
 In 1903 two unattached English missionaries, Storries and De 
 Carteret, began a mission at Chandgad, 24 miles from Belgaum. 
 
 In the province of Gujarat, working hand in hand with the 
 Irish Presbyterians, we find the "Jungle Tribes Mission" (1890), 
 likewise supported by Irish subscriptions. In Bombay there 
 has existed since 1894 an independent "Native Mission." In 
 North India there is the " North India School of Medicine 
 for Christian Women " at Ludhiana, in the Punjab. In the hot 
 jungles near Multan, Major-General Montague Millet, an 
 officer on the retired list, conducted an unattached mission 
 from 1887 to 1 90 1 at his own expense — mostly at Kacha 
 Khuh. He was a truly devoted man, but was undoubtedly 
 one of those men who are destined to work alone. He sent 
 out multitudes of missives, both big and little, through the 
 post, held Bible-readings, ran a small hospital, and engaged 
 in many similar undertakings. In like fashion the Hon. M. 
 Waldegrave carried on mission work at Peshawar, partly in 
 connection with the Church Missionary Society. At Bharatpur, 
 the capital of a former important Rajput state lying to the 
 west of Agra, a Miss Fowler superintends an independent 
 mission. At Allahabad, an Indian Christian lady. Miss Shorat 
 Chakarbutty, who is by the way an Indian M.A., founded in 
 1895 the "Victoria Girls' Home" for famine orphans, and in 
 order to support this a missionary association, " The Associa- 
 tion of the Daughters of India." On the slopes of the Himalayas 
 at Almora and Kalimali, in the United Provinces, the " Christian 
 Realm Mission " has been occupied in the evangelisation of the 
 people since 1897, though for the time being its sole directorate 
 consists of one European lay agent, an Indian clergyman, and 
 thirty-four native helpers. 
 
 This register of unattached missionaries and organisations 
 is incomplete. Many of these missions are only mentioned 
 occasionally in the press, others not at all. Many cease to 
 exist at the death of their founder, through lack of support, 
 or for other reasons ; and as in many cases their results are 
 such as cannot be tabulated, it must not be deemed too great 
 a lack in a history of Indian Missions if all the flowers which 
 bloom in hidden places to the glory of the Lord are not here 
 classified and tabulated. On the whole question we are 
 unfortunately compelled to adopt the verdict of a deputation 
 
22 8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 sent by the American Board, which certainly at the outset 
 was anything but unsympathetic towards unattached missionary 
 work : " We must express our conviction, based upon what 
 we have seen, that the so-called ' independent missions ' spend 
 a great deal of money to no purpose, and in the majority of 
 cases meet with but little success, even if they do not directly 
 hinder the progress of the kingdom of God." 
 
 There still remain two important groups of organisations 
 for the sending out of missionaries, concerning both of which 
 unfortunately information is likewise faulty. The first is that 
 of the Diocesan Boards of the Anglican bishoprics, whereof 
 more anon. In the second place, all the missionary societies 
 that have already met with considerable success, in the shape 
 of a consolidated Christian community, endeavour to impress 
 upon these communities the sacred duty of bringing the Good 
 News to the knowledge of their fellow-countrymen. A number 
 of these Indian Christian Churches have for this purpose 
 established more or less self-supporting missionary agencies 
 of their own. For the present almost all such associations 
 should be regarded rather as signs of life on the part of such 
 Churches than as being important because of their missionary 
 results ; they may therefore be left to the special missionary 
 history of individual districts. 
 
 In any case, the -missionary organisation of India has 
 become so complicated through this bewildering multiplicity 
 of missionary enterprises that even an expert can no longer 
 gain a complete grasp of the whole subject, nor can we hope 
 in this History to give anything like an exhaustive account 
 thereof ! ^ 
 
 Certain it is that the number of agencies working in India 
 is rapidly on the increase. The Missionary Census of 1851 
 recorded nineteen missionary societies and eleven unattached 
 missionaries; that of 1861, twenty-three societies and eight 
 unattached missionaries; in 1871 there were twenty-eight 
 societies and nine unattached missionaries; in 1881, thirty- 
 eight and four; in 1891, forty-four and nine; and in 1901, 
 seventy-three societies and a vast number of missionaries 
 unconnected with any particular organisation. 
 
 This being so, it is all the more necessary for those mission- 
 ary societies which work side by side to have due regard for 
 one another, and mutually to respect one another's frontiers 
 and communities. This is the more important because the 
 practice of the various societies is widely different not only 
 with regard to baptism and church discipline, but also in almost 
 
 1 We shall be grateful to readers of these pages for any reliable information re 
 other unattached missions or independent workers. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 229 
 
 every question of missionary and ecclesiastical polity. The 
 unhappily only too frequent breaches of missionary comity 
 compose one of the dark chapters of Indian missionary history. 
 Yet such incidents are unfortunately all too frequent, as every 
 one intimately connected with the respective divisions of territory 
 on the mission field is well aware. Historic boundaries have 
 been ignored, local feeling has been ruthlessly set aside, and 
 flagrant inroads have been made upon the domains of other 
 societies. 
 
 Such conduct is to us incapable of explanation. It is possible 
 that certain sections of the missionary army of Christ in India 
 regard themselves as the sole Divinely commissioned and com- 
 petent societies at work there. But what can we think of 
 claims of this nature when we see such societies baptizing 
 without the slightest hesitation groups of candidates for baptism 
 belonging to other missions, and locating themselves in the 
 very centre of districts which have been diligently worked by 
 other agencies for many years past? What charity is here? 
 What kindness? What brotherly love? 
 
 It is scandalous that one society should entice away 
 the catechists of another, perhaps by a promise of a higher 
 salary or quicker promotion, or that it should receive and 
 appoint to office native Christians or catechists who are for 
 the time being under the church discipline of another society. 
 Yet even so late as the Bombay Missionary Conference of 1892 
 it was found to be impossible to secure united action against 
 such disorders or to find a remedy for them. The most that 
 could be done was to pass a resolution to the effect that no 
 society should henceforth accept members or officials from 
 any other missionary society without first communicating with 
 the headquarters of the society in question. The Madras 
 Conference of 1902, however, went a good bit farther than this. 
 Subject to certain reservations and limitations, it affirmed the 
 principle of territorial division in missionary work, and appointed 
 a Court of Arbitration, upon which was conferred power to 
 intervene in all cases where one society should make inroads 
 in the special sphere of another. This Court of Arbitration 
 has already proved itself to be of wholesome value on several 
 occasions. For example, the Weinbrennerians (the Church of 
 God) wished to occupy the State of Jashpur in Chota Nagpur, 
 lying to the west of Biru ; Gossner's missionaries, however, 
 affirmed that they had a prior claim to it, as this State was 
 within their own sphere of influence — and the Court of 
 Arbitration supported their claim. 
 
 Missionary conferences too, especially the General Con- 
 ference for the whole of India, Burma, and Ceylon, became of 
 
2 30 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 much greater importance under these new conditions. They 
 have been held in Calcutta in 1882, Bombay in 1892, and 
 Madras in 1902. In the last-named city an important South 
 India Conference met in 1900. 
 
 There is also another aspect in which during the last quarter 
 of a century the organisation of Indian missions has become 
 incomparably more complicated than before, namely in the 
 manifold diversity of the work now carried on. Down to 1830 
 there was only one universally recognised branch of work 
 carried on in one form or another by every missionary — the 
 proclamation of the gospel by means of the preached or written 
 word. Since Dr. Duff's powerful personality appeared on the 
 scene in 1830, a second branch of activity has gradually and 
 after much difficulty won for itself a recognised position in 
 missionary work, namely educational work. After the Mutiny 
 in 1857 women missionaries made their appearance, at first 
 timidly, but after 1880 in great numbers, and with great 
 multiplicity of gifts ; by zenana work, girls' schools, and 
 women's hospitals, they have opened up new paths. In the 
 last twenty-five years three further branches have come to be 
 almost generally recognised : medical missions, industrial 
 missions, and homes and boarding schools for famine orphans. 
 No one of these branches is new, but as to how and why they 
 have recently pushed their way into the foreground of the 
 work, information will be given later. 
 
 This complexity is connected, at any rate in part, with 
 three movements which have especially characterised Indian 
 missionary work in our own day. Just as the characteristic 
 feature of the previous quarter of a century had been to attempt 
 on all hands to come into contact with the aborigines in their 
 mountain and forest fastnesses, so to an even greater extent 
 has a distinguishing feature of this last decade been an effort 
 to reach the very lowest classes of the people, the lowest 
 castes and the outcastes, or, as they are nowadays styled, the 
 Panchamas (the fifth order). According to the old Indian 
 conception as set forth in the laws of Manu, Indian society is 
 divisible into four orders : Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and 
 Sudras. A new name, coined by the Government but willingly 
 taken up by the missionaries, helps to differentiate yet a fifth 
 order. Formerly it was the custom to label the classes com- 
 prising this order " Pariah," but this word was far from being 
 a suitable one ; for it only really belongs to a distinct ca.ste- 
 group in the Tamil country, and even in the various parts of 
 that wide area it connotes very different social and civil con- 
 ditions, varying from a state of servile bondage to that of a 
 modest peasantry living on its own freehold property. " Pariah" 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 231 
 
 is a term not found in the other languages or among the other 
 peoples of India. 
 
 It is therefore desirable that this new and less invidious 
 term should be universally adopted. For the theory which 
 used to be held, that these Panchamas are ethnographically 
 and philologically different from both the higher castes among 
 which they live and from the aborigines of the neighbouring 
 hill country, has been proved to be erroneous. Progressive 
 ethnological research has rather demonstrated that the so-called 
 Dravidian peoples were in the very earliest times -split up into 
 numerous clans relatively independent of one another. Certain 
 of these clans early submitted to the onward rush of Aryan 
 civilisation, and by means of a broader intellectual life were 
 uplifted both socially and economically. Other clans resisted 
 the new stream of alien culture for centuries, but being eventually 
 unable to oppose the overwhelming advance of Hinduism, have 
 become the lower stratum, the bonded serfs of Hindu society. 
 The so-called aborigines of the present day are the last 
 remnants of those who have longest withstood this progressive 
 Hinduisation of the country. The lot which lies before them 
 when they become part and parcel of Hinduism is indeed a 
 sad one. From its world of higher culture, from contact with 
 its upper castes, with its idols, its temples, its literature, they 
 are debarred; not the least effort is made to uplift them in 
 any single direction ; rather are they in every way victimised 
 and exploited ; and in their feeble religious thought world they 
 remain, for the most part true to the barren, hopeless devil- 
 worship of their ancestors, save only that as their position in 
 life has been less favourable and their opportunities less 
 numerous, so have their devils become the more mischievous 
 and their devil-worship the more horrible. 
 
 From the first, missions have gained a not inconsiderable 
 number of their converts from among the Panchamas. Both in the 
 orphanages of North India and in the native churches of the Tamil 
 country and the Malayalam country they have always composed 
 a fairly numerous though unascertainable percentage of the whole 
 number of adherents. Yet the main attack of missions has not 
 been directed against them, but rather against the middle and 
 higher classes. The Panchamas have simply not been rejected 
 when they have happened to come into contact with Christian 
 missions and have been attracted to them. And on the whole 
 the Panchamas have not formed any very large part of the 
 Protestant Christian community. According to tradition, three- 
 quarters of the Christians in the congregations of the old Danish 
 Mission were Sudras. In the mass movements, in Tinnevelly 
 and in connection with the London Missionary Society in South 
 
2 32 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Travancore, those who were added to the Church were almost 
 exclusively Shanans, i.e. lower Sudras, who would have regarded 
 it as an insult to be reckoned as Panchamas. Of the 252 church 
 members in full communion belonging to the Maratha Mission 
 of the American Board in 1854, 43 belonged to the highest 
 castes, and 1 5 were converted Brahmans (Anderson's History of 
 India, p. 251). Also of the 91,000 native Christians in 1851, 
 almost two-thirds were Sudras. In the subsequent quarter of a 
 century there was a great influx of aborigines, but nowhere was 
 any considerable number of Panchamas recorded. Since the 
 great famine of 1 876-1 879, however, things have been different. 
 It was at that time that the great mass movement of the Mala 
 and Madiga castes in the Telugu country occurred. They really 
 made it evident to the missionary societies for the first time 
 what harvests might be garnered in from amongst these hitherto 
 almost neglected classes. And just as twenty-five years earlier 
 the movement in Chota Nagpur had been a trumpet-call to 
 the entire Indian missionary world, so now was this streaming 
 in of the Malas and Madigas. It was felt that a new era 
 imposed a new responsibility upon the various missions. The 
 Panchamas, downtrodden by the higher castes and by Hindus 
 as much as by Muhammadans, began to dimly realise that 
 Protestant missions were stretching out a hand to save them 
 from their misery. They saw that those castes which joined the 
 missionaries had their hungry fed, their sick healed, their 
 children taught, their young men lucratively employed either in 
 the service of missions or in that of the Government, and that 
 an increasing number of men and women of their own standing 
 were working their way up to positions which had been wholly 
 inaccessible to their fathers. Was it then such a wonderful 
 thing that, as far as they were capable of independent thought 
 and decision amid the dull barrenness of their enslaved existence, 
 they should conceive the idea of joining the Christian Church, 
 and that not in ones or twos, but in whole masses ? But an 
 equally serious decision had to be made by the missionary 
 societies. Hitherto they had considered it their duty simply to 
 preach the gospel to India, and to preach it in such a forceful 
 and comprehensible fashion as to bring about crises in the 
 national life. For such crises they had waited and hoped and 
 prayed. Suddenly they heard knocking at their doors a vast 
 multitude of poor miserable mendicants imploring help, whose 
 intellectual capacity was so imperfectly developed that the truth 
 of the gospel must be preached to them in the very simjilest 
 way. Those at the head of missionary work in the country said 
 amongst themselves that to respond to these masses of people 
 would involve an educational undertaking of the first magnitude. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 233 
 
 Such hosts of mankind would be a disgrace to Christianity, if it 
 could not uplift them in every way, spiritually, morally, in- 
 tellectually, socially and economically, and that despite all the 
 obstacles which the higher castes would naturally place in the 
 upward path of their quondam slaves ; despite all the hindrances 
 resulting from the depravity and degradation of past ages, their 
 weak moral character, the beggarliness and brutishness of the 
 new converts ; despite too all the dangers which the elevation of 
 lower classes of a people always entails, for the individual as 
 well as for the community. It is easy to realise that missionaries 
 faced this mass of fresh responsibility with a varying degree of 
 comprehension, systematised method, and energy. In our 
 opinion, the societies which entered upon it most heartily were 
 the American Baptists in the Telugu country, the Methodist 
 Episcopals in the United Provinces, and the American Congrega- 
 tionalists (A.B.) in the Ahmadnagar district. But no society held 
 entirely aloof from this difficult and often thankless task, not 
 even the Free Church of Scotland, whose gifts and history had 
 pointed so expressly in the direction of work amongst the highest 
 classes of the people. We can safely reckon that apart from the 
 missions to aborigines — who indeed are nearly related to them 
 — a good four-fifths of the entire success of missionary work 
 during the last twenty-five years has been realised amongst the 
 Panchamas. In the Madras Presidency the total number of 
 native Christians has increased as follows: — 1851, 74,176; 
 1861, 110,078 (an increase of 35,905); 1871, 160,955 (an 
 increase of 50,877) ; then came the years of the great famine 
 1 876-1 878; 1 88 1, 299,742 (an increase of 138,787); 1890,365,912 
 (an increase of 66,170); 1900, 506,019 (an increase of 140,107). 
 To appreciate these statistics aright we should consider them 
 alongside those of the Telugu missions, whose increase was 
 almost exclusively made up of Malas and Madigas. 
 
 American Baptists 
 American Lutheran') 
 
 General Synod / 
 American Lutheran) 
 
 General Council / 
 C.M.S. Telugu') 
 
 Mission J 
 
 L.M.S. Telugu) 
 
 Mission / 
 
 S5I. 
 
 I86I. 
 
 1S71. 
 
 18S1. 
 
 1890. 
 
 1900. 
 
 10 
 
 23 
 
 6,4iS 
 
 53,216 
 
 96,450 
 
 1 53.440 (?)' 
 
 64 
 
 338 
 
 2,149 
 
 7,988 
 
 13,566 
 
 20,486 
 
 10 
 
 29 
 
 320 
 
 707 
 
 1,360 
 
 5,000 (about) 
 
 II 
 
 259 
 
 1,082 
 
 5.124 
 
 6,034 
 
 13.103 
 
 10 
 
 1,250 
 
 2,793 
 
 6,331 
 
 6,791 
 
 9,284 
 
 405 1,899 13,562 73,366 111,191 201,213 
 
 Thus, of the entire increase in the Presidency between 1871 and 
 
 1 88 1 (138,787), some 60,000, and in the last decade (1890- 1900, 
 
 ^ The Annual Report for that year (1900) only gives 130,000. 
 
2 34 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 140,107) some 90,022, are to be traced to these five missions 
 amongst the Malas and Madigas, which are situated close 
 together in a relatively small district of the vast Presidency of 
 Madras ; that is, in the first of these three decades they 
 numbered more than a fifth, in the second more than a half, 
 and in the third more than three-fifths of the whole increase 
 within the Presidency. In the Tamil missions it is universally 
 admitted even by the Leipzig missionaries and the Society for 
 the Propagation of the Gospel, both of which have comparatively 
 large churches of Sudras in the very heart of the Tamil country, 
 that the increase during the last quarter of a century has been 
 almost wholly drawn from amongst the Panchamas. And most 
 illuminating of all is the fact that the increase in the two 
 Tinnevelly missions of the Church Missionary Society and the 
 Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which are pre- 
 dominantly Sudra missions, has come to a standstill since the 
 great increase during the famine years 1 878-1 879; in 1881 they 
 numbered together 95,624; in 1890, 93,302; in 1900, 86,760; 
 and according to the Annual Reports of 1904 and 1905, 77,317 
 — a disheartening fact. If we proceed to North India, the same 
 thing is most clearly illustrated in the United Provinces by a 
 comparison of the figures for the whole province with those of 
 the Episcopal Methodists (M.E.), who work almost entirely 
 amongst the Panchamas. 
 
 Native Christians in~\ 
 
 the United Provincesj 
 Of this number, the \ 
 
 Meth. Episcopalians 1- 
 
 had . . .J 
 
 i.e. of the total results . 
 
 This is the second characteristic feature of the last quarter 
 of a century, that the work of missions has been predominantly 
 amongst the Panchamas. The third has been engraven as with 
 hot iron by the awful distress of this last decade — the frightful 
 famines of 1896- 1897 and 1900 and the plague which has 
 raged in India since 1896. The great famine of 1 876-1 879, 
 which is still remembered, had revealed how deeply the famines 
 which visit India periodically influence every phase of life, and, 
 above all, missionary labour. It was therefore terrible news 
 when, owing to the continued delay of the monsoon rains upon 
 which far and away the greater part of the agriculture of India 
 almost entirely depends, the advent of a great drought and 
 famine was announced in 1896. An area of 228,000 square 
 miles, with a population of 80 millions, was affected (England 
 and Wales have an area of 58,000 square miles with 32^ million 
 
 851. 
 
 I86I. 
 
 1871. 
 
 1881. 
 
 1890. 
 
 1900. 
 
 ,732 
 
 3,982 
 
 7,779 
 
 12,709 
 
 30,321 
 
 108,990 
 
 
 297 
 
 1,748 
 
 5,416 
 
 22,607 
 
 96,385 
 
 
 7% 
 
 22% 
 
 43% 
 
 74% 
 
 88% 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 235 
 
 inhabitants). Since the great famine of 1876 the Government 
 had had nearly twenty years' breathing space in which to 
 prepare for similar calamities, and had made the best use of its 
 opportunity. The only fairly reliable protection against famine 
 lies in providing regular irrigation of the country from its inex- 
 haustible water supplies. Every year untold masses of water, 
 unused and often even harmful, are carried down the mighty 
 Indian rivers to the sea. The first task to be attempted, 
 therefore, was to bind these unwieldy giants and to force them 
 to serve the industrious sons of the soil in peaceful and well- 
 regulated canal systems. Even in the days of the Moghul 
 dominion the broad level Doab between the Ganges and the 
 Jumna had been thus fertilised by means of canals. The 
 English have taken in hand one river system after another — 
 the broad waste delta districts of the Godavari and Kistna, 
 the scarcely smaller deltas of the Mahanadi and Brahmani, the 
 watershed of the Periyar to the south of the Western Ghats. 
 Their greatest achievement has been during the last decade, 
 when they have laid down canals across great tracts of the 
 Punjab. In the Doab between the Chenab and the Ravi, the 
 canalised district (called variously the Rechna Doab or Jhang 
 Bar, or more recently the Chenab Colony) embraces an area of 
 2000 square miles and extends from near Wazirabad in the north 
 to the neighbourhood of Multan. The centre of the colony is 
 Lyallpur ; from thence the traveller can now traverse hundreds 
 of miles of waving cornfields, where formerly there existed 
 nothing but barrenness and desolation, and the newly founded 
 town of Gojra has become one of the principal wheat marts of 
 the country. One million seven hundred thousand acres of 
 wild and waste land have thus been brought under cultivation. 
 A second and less extensive canal system, but yet one which 
 embraces more than 1420 square miles, was opened to traffic 
 in October 1901 ; this was the Jhelum Colony, between the 
 Jhelum and the Chenab, having as its central town Sargoda. 
 Even in 1896 14,000 miles of artificially constructed irrigation 
 canals were said to be in existence. Since that time their 
 length has probably more than doubled. 
 
 The Indian Government had prepared itself in other ways 
 for the famine. The whole of India had been divided into a 
 great number of "blocks," for the ample connection of which 
 the construction of high roads was undertaken. A number of 
 lines of railway were constructed solely with the object of opening 
 up districts difficult of access. When at last, however, gaunt 
 famine did actually stride through the land, it was found that 
 all these preparatory measures were insufficient to cope with 
 the immeasurable distress. 
 
2 36 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 To make matters still worse, since the autumn of 1896 the 
 land has been afflicted uith relentless severity by bubonic 
 plague, the "black death" of the Middle Ages, carried to India 
 in the first place from Hong Kong. Beginning at Bombay, 
 the plague on the one hand took firm root in certain commercial 
 centres like Poona, Patna, Hubli, etc., where it burst forth with 
 renewed vigour again and again ; and on the other hand it 
 spread slowly but surely from taluq to taluq, from province to 
 province, until at last one could almost foretell the month in 
 which it would arrive in a given neighbourhood ; then again it 
 would spread in a sporadic and altogether unaccountable 
 fashion, turning up most unexpectedly now at one place, now 
 at another very far distant one, spreading fear and havoc 
 wherever it went, and driving the well-nigh distracted populace 
 hither and thither like the leaves before a hurricane. According 
 to official statistics, which must be far below the mark on 
 account of the Hindu dread of notification and its attendant 
 evils of house-to-house investigation, disinfection, etc., there died 
 of the plague in 1898, 118,000; 1899, 135,000; 1900, 193,000; 
 1901,274,000; 1902, 577,000. In March 1903 there died of it in one 
 week(5th-iith)45,54i persons ; for the whole year 1903,853,000; 
 1904, 1,040,000; January ist to February i8th, 1905, 223,690; 
 since the outbreak of the plague in 1896, 3,352,109. P^specially 
 did it seem to glut its rage in the Bombay and Poona districts 
 and in the Punjab. In the last-named province there died in 
 February 1902 no less than 29,992 persons; at Gujranwala 
 the weekly total of deaths was for many months looo; in the 
 Ludhiana district, 2900 ; in the Sialkot district 30,000 men died 
 in 1902 alone, and the plague is at the present stronger than 
 ever, and there is still little hope of its being stamped out. 
 It generally sets in with undiminished severity in February 
 and March each year. It could not but be expected that such 
 a devastating scourge would stir the very hearts of the people. 
 Rumours of every kind concerning the origin and purpose of 
 the plague began to circulate. First, it was the missionaries 
 who had strewn a poison powder in all the springs and wells in 
 order to kill all who were not Christians ; now it was the 
 PLnglish Queen or Viceroy who had ordered a general poisoning 
 of the people of India. On the other hand, many were inclined 
 to see in the plague a judgment of God on the sins of the 
 people, and in the comparative freedom from it enjoyed by 
 Christians (natives as well as English) a gracious providence of 
 God, a victory for Christ. 
 
 At first the Government attempted to set bounds to the 
 disease by instituting preventive measures of the broadest 
 character. Strict quarantine was established both at ports and 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 237 
 
 on the railways. Any one desiring to leave the plague area had 
 to obtain a medical certificate concerning the actual state of his 
 health. In every house where a case occurred, the other 
 members of the family were forced to enter the isolation camps, 
 which quickly sprang up in all directions, and remain there ten 
 days under observation ; all infected underclothing, upper 
 garments and beds were burnt, and infected suburbs or quarters 
 of the large towns were pulled down or set on fire. These 
 strong measures were well meant, but they had such evil results 
 that people lost confidence in them. The natives rebelled 
 against these attacks on the sanctuary of their homes and 
 families ; popular insurrections broke out ; English officials 
 charged with the carrying out of these laws were laid hands 
 upon, and even murdered. And the artful Hindus found so 
 many ways of evading the most stringent regulations, of con- 
 cealing cases of plague, of removing patients suffering from the 
 plague, that it became evident that in this way the evil could 
 never be suppressed. Comparatively speaking, the best ex- 
 pedient discovered has been the inoculation treatment perfected 
 by an Austrian physician. Dr. Haffkine ; those who underwent 
 this treatment were practically immune from the plague at any 
 rate for several months, or if they did contract it, it was only in 
 a mild form. The better educated classes, and above all, the 
 native Christians, at the instigation of the missionaries, submitted 
 to the treatment by inoculation, and it is to this circumstance 
 that the practical exemption of Christians from the plague is to 
 be attributed. 
 
 Missionary work was hindered by the plague in many ways. 
 Bazaar preaching and evangelistic tours had to be given up, 
 many of the zenanas were closed, the populations of whole 
 towns and villages were dispersed. But there was plenty of 
 work for the missionaries to do in the care of the sick and the 
 burial of the dead. Just as at this time of need the hardhearted- 
 ness and pitilessness of heathendom were seen as never before, 
 so much the more clearly against such a dark background did 
 the fair picture shine out of a large number of doctors and 
 nurses who, courageous in the presence of death, performed 
 their devoted ministries of comfort in the midst of a dying 
 people. One lady missionary, Mrs. Gilder, succumbed whilst 
 engaged in this work. 
 
 The great famine of 1897 was followed in 1900 by a second, 
 which affected an even greater area and was still more terrible 
 than its predecessor, a famine which was in fact equal to the 
 very worst recorded on the tear-stained pages of India's history. 
 Whereas the famine of 1897 had affected an area of some 
 228,000 square miles and a population of eighty millions, that 
 
238 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 in 1900 extended over more than 240,00x3 square miles and 
 sixty-one million persons were added to those who suffered. 
 At the height of the distress the Government reports state that 
 forty-nine millions of the population were absolutely starving, 
 and one and a quarter millions perished either from pure starva- 
 tion or from hunger typhus.^ Two circumstances contributed 
 to make the distress this time insupportable. In the first place, 
 all the energy and attention of England were engaged in the 
 war with the South African Republics, which was just then at its 
 most critical stage. Nevertheless, the Indian Treasury expended 
 ;^750,ooo in alleviating the misery of the people, and five million 
 individuals were either employed in relief works or fed free of 
 cost. Moreover, it was not a case this time of the failure of the 
 monsoon for one year. The land had not yet recovered from 
 the drought of 1897, and the rainfall for 1899 had been irregular 
 and slight; also during 1901 and the first half of 1902 there 
 was no rain in certain very large areas ; so that it was now a 
 question of soil, which for five, and in many cases for seven 
 years had been devoid of rain, and which was by this time 
 completely parched. 
 
 Only in the second half of the year 1902 did plenteous 
 showers of rain fall in the greater part of the districts concerned, 
 and bring the real period of distress to an end. One very bad 
 feature of these famines is that even a number of good harvests 
 do not remove the traces of such misery ; numberless small 
 proprietors and farmers fall into the hands of the usurers during 
 the period of dearth, and for years they wrestle in vain to get 
 out of their clutches ; the moneylenders insist in carrying off 
 the crops from the fields, to cover the interest on their loans. 
 Hundreds of thousands are dispersed up and down in the 
 country districts or have migrated to a distance, and their 
 villages remain desolate and in ruins. A still greater number, 
 owing to abstention from food or insufficient quantities of it, are 
 so undermined in health that they pine away and fall an easy 
 prey to the plague. 
 
 That in the train of the famine cholera would devastate the 
 land was unfortunately only to be expected. Especially great 
 were its ravages in the Telugu country and in the highlands of 
 Rajputana and Kashmir ; two missionaries belonging to the 
 Schleswig- Holstein Evangelical Lutheran Missionary Society 
 in Jaipur, Messrs. Timm and Kuhlmann, and one to the Church 
 Missionary Society's work amongst the Bhils, Thompson, were 
 carried off by it. Even more lamented was the death (also of 
 cholera, on September ist, 1901) of Miss Isabella Thoburn, the 
 
 ^ The Methodist Episcopal Report in 1900 records one million cases of death in 
 Rajputana alone (Elders' Report, p. 25). 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS 239 
 
 highly gifted founder and for many years principal of the 
 Women's College at Lucknow. 
 
 All the missionary societies have worked at high pressure 
 during the years of the famine, and as energetic friends continu- 
 ally kept their hands full of gifts they were able to keep tens of 
 thousands from perishing by means of soup-kitchens, road- 
 making, chapel-building, by improvised industries and many 
 other expedients of ever inventive love. The Church Mission- 
 ary Society expended ;^ 12,000, Robert Arthington £9000, the 
 American Lutherans £^yoo, and so on. The tireless and 
 energetic editor of the New York Christian Hei-ald, a German, 
 Dr. Klopsch, gained for himself honourable distinction by 
 collecting from his readers ;^62,500, and then freighting a ship 
 with rice and other grain, and with these stores sailing to India, 
 where he was able personally to superintend their distribution. 
 The Anglo-Indian Government recognised the able and self- 
 sacrificing aid rendered by the missionaries. Quite a number 
 of missionaries were decorated with the newly created Order 
 for public service rendered to India, the Kaisar-i-Hind Order. 
 Dr. A. Neve, a C.M.S. medical missionary at Srinagar, and Dr. 
 R. A. Hume of Ahmadnagar (American Board), received the 
 gold medal of the Order in 1900, whilst the venerable Julius 
 Lohr of Bisrampur (American Evang. Synod), and other mission- 
 aries, both male and female, received the silver medal.^ 
 
 The greatest interest was taken on the part of the missionary 
 societies in the gathering in of the helpless widows and orphans. 
 Such orphanages as had been built during former famines were 
 crowded to the very last place, and new ones sprang up like 
 mushrooms. During the two famines of 1896- 1897 and 1900 
 evangelical missions have provided for 24,360 children, widows 
 and orphans in this way. (Mr. Pegg, an agent of the Church 
 Missionary Society, even reckons that there must have been 
 30,000.) Particularly numerous among these newly founded 
 orphanages are the so-called " Faith Orphanages," i.e. homes for 
 which no missionary society in the homeland has undertaken 
 financial responsibility, and which have been established by 
 energetic missionaries, both male and female, on their own 
 responsibility, and on the strength of faith in God and in the 
 help of Christian friends. By far the most important and 
 most interesting of these institutions is that of Pandita Ramabai, 
 at Mukti, near Khedgaon, in the Maratha country, in which 
 
 ^ As these distinctions are highly prized in India, and are looked upon as a public 
 recognition of missionary work, we may here add the names of the other Protestant 
 missionaries who have been decorated with the gold medal : Dr. Abbott, of the 
 American Board, Bombay ; Dr. John Murdoch, originator of the " Christian Mission- 
 ary Society " of Madras ; Graham, founder of the " St. Andrews' Colonial Homes " 
 at Kalimpong ; and Ferdinand Hahn, of Gossner's Mission. 
 
2 40 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 about 1800 helpless widows have found a Christian home. 
 A similar widows' and orphans' village was founded by a Mr. 
 and Mrs. Lawson (Episcopal Methodist missionaries) at 
 Aligarh, in the United Provinces; they took 1300 widows 
 and orphans under their care, Mr. and Mrs. Lee of Calcutta 
 (also Episcopal Methodist missionaries) likewise founded an 
 orphanage for boys and girls which took in 280 children ; 
 in connection with this institution a missionary union has 
 sprung into being, the Industrial Evangelistic Mission, having 
 Its headquarters in London. The unattached missionary 
 Norton, who has already been mentioned several times, settled 
 in Dhond, near Khedgaon, and established a boys' orphanage 
 with accommodation for 4000 children. Dr. Klopsch, the editor, 
 undertook to support 5000 orphans for five years. Nor were the 
 missionary societies idle. In Ahmadnagar, a western district 
 of the Maratha country, which had been especially ravaged by 
 the famine, the American Board took in over 2845 orphans ; it 
 distributed seed rice to 24,665 small farmers, and assisted 15 14 
 others to obtain new oxen to plough their land. 
 
 In former great famines one of the results has generally 
 been that vast numbers have clamoured at the doors of the 
 Christian Church for admittance and that the number of 
 baptisms has increased rapidly ; but in connection with the 
 last two famines there are no such mass movements to record, 
 or at any rate, only to a comparatively small extent. A very 
 few missions, such as those of the Episcopal Methodists in 
 the United Provinces and in Gujarat, have baptized large 
 numbers of converts. On the other hand, there has been an 
 understanding among the missionaries to admit as few candi- 
 dates as possible for baptism whilst the famine lasted, and as 
 far as may be none from amongst those in receipt of aid of any 
 kind from the different societies. This has been done to 
 avoid even the appearance of making " Rice Christians." In the 
 Telugu country the Mala and Madiga movement almost came to 
 a standstill during these years of distress — only to move for- 
 ward with greater momentum at the close of that period. Even 
 the Pariah movement in South India appears to have become 
 stationary since the last famine. Without doubt, however, 
 the great increase in the results of missions from 559,661 
 native Christians in 1890 to 854,867 in the year 1900 (or say 
 295,201 within a single decade) is to be associated with the 
 after effects of the help which had been so devotedly rendered 
 during the stress of plague and famine. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 I. Animistic Religions 
 
 After thus briefly portraying the development of Indian 
 missions, let us turn our attention from their external circum- 
 stances to the inner and secret forces which have influenced 
 this development, partly assisting and partly retarding it. The 
 great problem of missionary work is, How can Christianity 
 overcome and supplant native forms of religion ? On closer 
 examination this simple problem resolves itself for India into 
 three main questions: (i) the problem of the popular religions; 
 (2) the caste problem ; (3) the problem of Indian pantheism. 
 We shall begin by rapidly sketching a few of the forces which 
 have furthered missionary progress ; we can do so the more 
 succinctly because the account given in the previous chapter 
 has already shown us these different forces at work. 
 
 (a) Whilst the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had 
 been passed in well-nigh interminable wars, whether between 
 the peoples of India or between the rival European powers, 
 the establishment of British rule brought the whole country, 
 from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, an almost universal 
 peace, the Pax Britajinica. Wars now occurred only on the 
 frontiers and for the most part only to prepare the way for 
 the further extension of territory, — though of course, in so 
 doing, new doors for missionary enterprise were opened. They 
 did not disturb or destroy missionary work, on the contrary 
 they rather stimulated it to further achievement ; thus it was 
 with the Maratha wars in the first decades of the centurj', 
 the war in the Punjab about the middle of the century, and 
 the wars of 1824 and 1886 in Burma. The year of terror 
 during the great Mutiny of 1S57-1 858 only causes the long era of 
 peace both before and after to stand out in so much bolder relief. 
 
 {U) Since the overthrow of the shortsighted policy of the 
 
 East India Company British rule has, as a matter of fact, 
 
 meant an open door for Christianity. It is true that during 
 
 the hot political strife in England after the Mutiny the sup- 
 
 16 
 
242 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 porters of foreign missions did not succeed in inducing the 
 Indian Government to look with greater favour on missions, 
 nor in bringing about an era of even judiciously limited official 
 protection for them ; but the policy of strong neutrality in 
 » religious affairs, candidly expressed as it was and ever more 
 consistently executed, was really all that missions required. 
 When the Government had severed official connection with 
 heathenism, with its temples and its idolatry, and when, dating 
 from the days of the far-seeing and benevolent Lord William 
 Bentinck (1828-1835), — especially through the instrumentality 
 of that gifted historian, Macaulay, and of the great jurist, 
 Sir Henry Maine, — the Indian administration of justice, and 
 especially Indian criminal law, had been revised in accordance 
 with Western principles of jurisprudence (i 837-1 861), there 
 remained, at any rate in those regions that were directly 
 under English rule, scarcely anything to be desired with regard 
 to the attitude of the Government towards missionary work. 
 
 (<r) The British Raj was seen to be most potent in opening 
 up the country by means of roads, railways, and canals, and 
 in installing swifter and safer means of communication with 
 Europe, especially with England. This English policy of free 
 communication can only be characterised as perfect. It has 
 not only considerably facilitated the connection of the mission- 
 ary societies with their far-distant headquarters, but has also 
 prepared a way for them in the interior of the country, even 
 in the remotest districts, and lightened the toil of travelling. 
 To see this clearly one has only to think of the shelters erected 
 for travellers along every line of communication, the Dak 
 Bungalows for Europeans, and the Sattirams for the natives. 
 
 {d) Hand in hand with this general opening up of the 
 country for purposes of traffic, and very much more so since 
 the reform of the Indian school system under Dr. Duff and 
 Lord William Bentinck (1830- 183 5), there has come the in- 
 tellectual development of the Indian people (through the 
 British educational policy). Although considerable devia- 
 tions may seem to have been made from that policy as 
 originally laid down, and although it has not been by any 
 means entirely acceptable to missionaries, yet on the whole 
 it is this same educational policy which has proved the way 
 by which missions have penetrated into the very heart of 
 Indian society, and the means whereby an influence has been 
 won which could otherwise have been attained only with the 
 greatest difficulty. 
 
 {e) This intellectual opening up of India is of special moment 
 because it has aroused the peoples of India from the "waking 
 slumber" into which all departments of their intellectual life 
 
RELIGIOUS niOBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 243 
 
 had fallen for many centuries. Whereas at the commence- 
 ment of the nineteenth century almost every branch of mental 
 culture in India — the dialects of the people, Sanskrit research, 
 architecture, literature, etc. — was in a state of neglect, of 
 desolation and of decay, contact with the youthfully buoyant 
 and energetic civilisation of the West has imparted to each of them 
 no slight amount of impetus. Above all, it has forced Indian 
 thought and civilisation to enter into a thorough examination 
 and analysis of itself, when placed in contrast with the civilisa- 
 tion of the ruling race — a civilisation out of the West which is 
 the product of Christianity. And in this great intellectual task 
 the question of Christianity is continually vindicating its right 
 to serious consideration. 
 
 Yet these and similar forces are only valuable in that they 
 have served as a preparation for missionary work ; the actual 
 task of the missionary, which must ever be the overthrow of the 
 religions of heathenism, is in no wise aided by them. The first 
 question we are compelled to take up is : " What has been up 
 to the present the attitude of the Indian religions towards 
 Christianity, and what prospects are there of their ultimate 
 overthrow?" We have not the intention, any more than we 
 had above (p. 17 et seq\ of giving here a connected account of 
 the manifold and Protean network of the Indian religions, 
 either from the point of view of their historical development, or 
 from that of the form in which we to-day find them ; such an 
 attempt would carry us far beyond the limits of our theme. 
 Let us rather consider, as the biologist a number of transverse 
 sections, what are the tasks which have been and are presented 
 to the missionary by the various strata of Hinduism. Let us 
 first confine our attention to Hinduism in the narrower sense, i.e. 
 simply as the popular religion. 
 
 Modern Hinduism presents itself to us as a highly com- 
 plicated geological section at the base of which we find the 
 most elementary religious forms of brutal fetishism and barren 
 animism, but at the summit a sublime religious philosophy 
 revelling in transcendental speculation. The separate strata 
 offer mission work a most varied objective, and place before it 
 tasks of diverse character. In the lower grades we find a broad 
 stratum of tribal religions, for the most part of a popular nature, 
 which we may sum up in a phrase (though this is none too clear 
 or precise) as " animistic forms of religion." What is thereby 
 meant is tersely explained by Sir H. Risley, Census Report 
 1901,1. § 627, p. 356): "Animism in India conceives of man as 
 passing through life surrounded by a ghostly company of 
 powers, elements, tendencies, — mostly impersonal in their 
 character, — shapeless phantasms of which no image can be made 
 
244 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and no definite idea can be formed. Some of these have 
 departments or spheres of influence of their own : one presides 
 over cholera, another over smallpox, another over cattle-disease ; 
 some dwell in rocks, others haunt trees, others again are 
 associated with rivers, whirlpools, waterfalls, or with strange 
 pools hidden in the depths of the hills. All of them require to 
 be diligently propitiated by reason of the ills which proceed 
 from them. . . . The essence of these practices is magic. If 
 certain things are done decently and in order, the powers of 
 evil are rendered innocuous in a mechanical but infallible 
 fashion. But the rites must be correctly performed, the magic 
 formulje must be accurately pronounced, or else the desired 
 effect will not be produced." 
 
 In these words Risley more especially describes the animism 
 of the Kolarian and Dravidian forest tribes of Chota Nagpur, 
 the Munda and Oraon Kols, the Santals, etc. Mythological 
 stories here play only a small and subordinate part. Even 
 concerning Singbonga, the good but somewhat listless deity 
 who resides in the sun and who is perhaps more or less identical 
 therewith ; concerning his faithless consort, Chander, Chando 
 Omol or Chanala, the moon ; concerning Marang Burn, the 
 spirit dwelling in the high mountains who is worshipped by 
 both Hindus and Muhammadans alike — concerning all these 
 the Mundas have but little to say. And the spirits of the 
 departed have only a secondary importance in their eyes ; they 
 receive, it is true, a modest portion of every repast, hens are at 
 certain times sacrificed to them — partly out of friendly interest 
 in their welfare in the spirit-world, but principally to dissuade 
 them from ever returning to the huts of their posterity ; after 
 the sacrifice the spirits are entreated to return to their habita- 
 tions far underground ; and those present at the sacrifice 
 carefully sweep away all traces of their footsteps in order that 
 the spirits may not be able to find their way to the dwelling- 
 places of the living. The Mangars in Nepal even go so far 
 as to obstruct the path from the grave to their homes with 
 thorns in order that the spirits, whom they imagine to be a kind 
 of mannikin, may not be able to come that way {idem, 355, 
 415 ; cf. Nottrott, GossncrscJic KcVs-Miss., vol. i. p. 57). 
 
 To the same group of animistic forms of religion belong in 
 reality the, in general, scanty religious conceptions of the 
 Tibeto-Burmese peoples, who inhabit the north and east of 
 Bengal, the mountain forests of Assam, and almost the whole 
 of Burma. But animism here assumes, on the one hand more 
 mischievous, and on the other, foreign features. Amongst the 
 countless spirits who menace the life and welfare of the Karens 
 and the Burmans, the Nahs (Karen) or Nats (Burmese) play a 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 245 
 
 large part. These are " wicked spirits of the most dangerous 
 order. They are worshipped throughout the whale of Further 
 India; their cult has superseded Buddhism, which in these parts 
 only seems to be a fair-weather religion, for as soon as any 
 calamity appears, even the Buddhists themselves fall to 
 worshipping the Nats again. The Nats are the main source of 
 all the evils which beset mankind in this world. They can also 
 take possession of a man, who is then called a Nat-man, i.e. 
 conjurer or witch. Their number is legion. Whole villages 
 and clans are often impeached of sorcery, held in the greatest 
 awe, and shunned by all. These people can destroy human 
 life by their magic, or can cause lumps of leather or linen, in the 
 guise of beetles and other insects, to enter the bodies and 
 entrails of their enemies, even when the latter are at a great 
 distance — so that they die very rapidly " {Allgem. Miss. Zeitschrift, 
 1879, p. 64). 
 
 In a curious fashion this animism is related to the totemistic 
 stories of the Creation to be found among nearly all the Indo- 
 Chinese peoples. The Was make it their boast that they are 
 descended from a couple of tadpoles, who later grew into 
 werewolves {Census Report, 1901, Ethnographical Appendices 
 to vol. i. p. 214). The Palaungs trace their descent to a Naga 
 or snake princess, who is said to have laid three eggs and from 
 the first of the three to have hatched their forefathers ; the 
 Mons, or Talaings, also claim descent from this snake princess, 
 whilst the ancestor of the Kachins is said to have been born 
 from a pumpkin, and so on {Census Report, 1901, vol. i. p. 534). 
 
 Bound up with this totemism and the ancestral legends 
 therewith connected we also find such singular usages and 
 customs as the head-hunting and skull-worship of the Was. 
 Not that the Was can be really termed cannibals, although 
 neighbouring tribes reproach them with the vice ; but when a 
 new village is to be built, when drought is impending, when 
 a pestilential disease is working havoc amongst the people, or on 
 any similar occasion, then a new skull has to be obtained and 
 solemnly offered up. Thus was it ordained by their two 
 founders, the werewolves Ya Htawa and Ya Htai. It will be 
 seen that this is something wholly different from the animism 
 of the Kols. 
 
 We are once more among animistic doctrines, although it is 
 an animism whose characteristic features present considerable 
 variety, when we consider the religious beliefs of the Pariahs 
 and the lowest castes, especially in South India, and above all 
 amongst the Tamils, the Telugus, and the Malayals. Here too 
 the numberless spirits and demons are pre-eminently malevolent ; 
 such are the beings termed " Ammen," that is " mothers," 
 
246 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 amongst whom we find the Muttar-Ammen, the awful goddess 
 of smallpox, and Mari-Ammen, the mother of death. " Kali 
 and Bhaara Kali, who play so large a part in the worship of 
 Siva, are neither more nor less than prehistoric Dravidian 
 village-deities, and as such they are still worshipped by those 
 tribes which have had little contact with Hindu civilisation." 
 Alongside these greater spirits we have the wild array of the 
 lean black Peys, or spirits of the dead, of the fat little red 
 Bhuts and of the restless Pisachas, who only stir abroad that 
 they may torment unfortunate human beings. Specially 
 important as rites in the service of such deities are certain 
 ecstatic conditions, as, for instance, the so-called "devil dances." 
 Bishop Caldwell gives a graphic description of these dances 
 {Comparative Grammar of Dravidian Languages, p. 585 
 et seq.). Fantastically clad, amid deafening noise from rattling, 
 bellowing, and piercing musical instruments, the exorciser of 
 spirits begins his dance. " The music is at first comparatively 
 slow and the dancer seems impassive and sullen. . . . Gradually 
 as the music becomes quicker and louder, his excitement begins 
 to rise. Sometimes to help him to work himself up into a 
 frenzy he uses medicated draughts, cuts and lacerates his flesh 
 till the blood flows, lashes himself with a huge whip, presses a 
 burning torch to his breast, drinks the blood which flows from 
 his own wounds, or drinks the blood of the sacrifice, putting 
 the throat of the decapitated goat to his mouth. Then, as if he 
 had acquired new life, he begins to brandish his staff" of bells, 
 and dance with a quick, but wild unsteady step. Suddenly the 
 afflatus descends. There is no mistaking that glare, or those 
 frantic leaps. He snorts, he stares, he gyrates. . . . The devil- 
 dancer is now worshipped as a present deity." 
 
 What attitude, then, have these animistic religions taken up 
 with regard to Christianity? Meagre as is their spiritual 
 content, misty and vague their beliefs, and the spirits and 
 devils which are worshipped being in nearly every case male- 
 volent, it is no wonder that these inferior forms of religion 
 have a tendency either to vanish into thin air when they come 
 into contact with higher forms or to be themselves assimilated 
 to those higher forms. We can follow with photographic ac- 
 curacy this process of higher forms of religion pressing in upon 
 the lower animistic tribal religions (Appendix to chapter viii. of 
 the Census Report for igoi : " Religious Ideas of some Animistic 
 Tribes in Bengal," pp. 401-420). That the Mundas, Oraons, 
 and Santals have been thus influenced is well known. Fven 
 amongst the Juangs, apparently the least civilised of all Indian 
 races, we find Hindu deities like Siva, Durga, and Balabhadra 
 held in honour ; all they lack is a few Brahmans to serve as 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 247 
 
 their priests — at present the Deharis or village priests must also 
 execute this service towards the Hindu gods. The religion of 
 the Mangars in Nepal is described as having already become 
 a lax form of Hinduism, intermingled with vestiges of the old 
 animistic worship. The religion of the Musahars " illustrates 
 with remarkable exactitude the gradual metamorphosis of the 
 fetishistic and animistic ideas of the Old Dravidian tribes into 
 the degenerate Hinduism of the lower strata of the caste 
 system." 
 
 As a matter of fact we can distinguish three stages in this 
 process. A great number of tribes have retained animistic 
 conceptions with remarkable tenacity. In the course of their 
 historical development they have come to regard the represent- 
 atives of the higher forms of religion — the Hindus in Bengal, 
 the Buddhists in Burma — as their deadly enemies, and this 
 enmity has been to them a wall of protection preserving their 
 animism in an uncontaminated form. Such tribes present, 
 almost without exception, a very favourable soil for Christian 
 missions. They are in a large measure a field well prepared 
 for the seed of the gospel. Such are the Mundas, the Oraons, 
 the Santals, and likewise the Karens, the Khassis, and the Nagas. 
 A great and a good God and Father in heaven, who sent His 
 only begotten Son to be the Saviour of the world, and who 
 protects His children from the malice and power of all spirits 
 and demons — this is in very deed a gospel of salvation to these 
 races. Unfortunately, however, the number of those tribes who 
 have preserved their animism intact is very limited. The Bhils, 
 for instance, are already so far Hinduised as to have changed 
 their Dravidian language for an Aryan dialect. And the Gonds 
 of Central India, who with their population of one and a 
 quarter millions may be looked upon as the most numerous 
 and influential of these Old Dravidian forest folk, have submitted 
 themselves to this Hinduising process to such an extent that 
 great numbers of them no longer speak the old Dravidian 
 Gondi, but a mixed Aryan dialect. The second stage brings 
 before us those tribes and races in whose midst the Hinduising 
 process has made such progress that they have already been 
 included and incorporated into the great structure of the caste 
 system. Owing to the peculiar rigidity and exclusiveness of 
 that system, it happens almost invariably in such cases of 
 incorporation that the respective tribes or clans sink down to the 
 despised level of the Panchamas ; as such they have no share in 
 the worship of the great Hindu gods, no admission to their 
 temples, and very often no Brahmans as priests. From a 
 religious point of view they are left to themselves, and hence 
 become demoralised. It would be of great interest to trace 
 
248 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 this down-sinking and uprising of Dravidian and Kolarian 
 tribes, and portions of tribes, in the lower strata of Hinduism ; 
 but we must for the present forbear. To this second stage 
 belong the Pariahs and the Shanans, the Malas and the 
 Madigas, the Mahars and the Mangs, the Chamars and the 
 Mehtars. As these tribes or castes have gained little by being 
 received into Hindu society, and have lost much both religiously 
 and socially, it is in many cases possible to awaken in them the 
 thought of a second conversion, of a transition from a Hinduism 
 that is for them without healing and without hope, to Chris- 
 tianity, with its rich and manifold promises. As well as the 
 comforting contrast between the simple affectionate teaching of 
 Christianity and a belief in those malignant spirits who peopled 
 their previous religious world, they are also particularly 
 attracted by the prospect of the religious and civil equality 
 which Christianity holds out to them, and by the efforts of 
 the missionaries — as a result of the necessary connection exist- 
 ing between the Christian doctrine of love and this same 
 fundamental principle of social equality — to help every one of 
 their adherents to attain to an honourable state of existence. 
 
 Where, however, such animistic tribes have gained socially 
 by their reception into the higher form of religion, or at any rate 
 have not lost by it, where the higher faith has been able to 
 make appropriate provision for the proselytes and to grant to 
 them real equality, there it is that Christianity finds a hard soil 
 and an almost complete lack of response. This has particularly 
 been the case with Buddhism in Further India and Ceylon. 
 The Burmese and the Singhalese races which Buddhism has 
 " commandeered," though it may have exercised only a superficial 
 influence upon them, offer Christianity the most tenacious 
 opposition, in spite of the fact that everywhere beneath the 
 thin varnish of Buddhism animistic ideas and practices exist 
 with unabated strength. Islam too has generally offered its 
 converts sufficient attractions to bind them fast to itself; we 
 can see this on a large scale in the only superficially Muham- 
 madanised peoples of Eastern Bengal and in the town and 
 country population of the Western Punjab and Kashmir. We 
 cannot but conclude that in former times the Hinduising, from 
 a religious point of view, of the great Dravidian peoples was 
 accomplished along similar lines ; to them the striking Aryan 
 theogony and view of life has as a matter of fact brought so 
 much that they could afford to make light of the loss of their 
 poverty-stricken little animism, and feel no inclination what- 
 ever to know more about Christianity as a still better and 
 richer faith. The task and the methods of the missionary 
 amongst these races and tribes grossly contented with a show 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 249 
 
 of things will be of a very different nature from his work 
 among- the simple-minded animists. 
 
 2. Popular Hinduism 
 
 Let us now ask, What is the attitude towards Christian 
 missions adopted by the great body of popular Hinduism? 
 We shall not here enter upon a description of this division 
 of Hinduism in its mollusc-like manifoldness and the Protean 
 diversity of its phenomena. Common, however, to all its forms 
 is an endlessly varied world of gods : and even though this 
 Pantheon has a different meaning for the simple peasant and 
 for the temple Brahman, for the Bengali and for the Tamil, 
 yet are they all polytheists. And it is beyond doubt that 
 along with this polytheism there prevails amongst great 
 masses of the people gross idolatry, the worship of wooden 
 and stone images, also worship and divine honours for sacred 
 animals (cobras, monkeys and cows) and plants (the Tulsi 
 plant, the pipal tree). The philosophically trained Hindu 
 will try to make little of this gross idolatry, to spiritualise it, 
 to cast a veil over its nakedness. But the ordinary practices 
 of everyday life and close observation of the manners of worship 
 of the great mass of people all speak to the contrary (^Intelli- 
 gencer, 1905, 731 et seg., "The Hindu Idol"). The missionaries 
 are in the right when they meet polytheism and idolatry 
 with a strong emphatic protest, and when they make their 
 appeal to the witness of the religious understanding to the 
 one God and to the worship of Him in spirit and in truth. 
 This standpoint of intelligent monotheism gives Christian 
 missions a position with regard to the majority of the popula- 
 tion of India as strong as that taken up by Christianity in the 
 first three centuries with regard to the all-dominating polytheism 
 of the Grceco-Roman Empire. 
 
 It ought to be pointed out, however, that all sections of this 
 vast Hindu population do not maintain an equally hostile 
 attitude towards Christianity. It is true that as yet no door 
 whatever has been opened amongst the Jains and other sects 
 similarly under Buddhistic influences, amongst the Saivites of 
 South India, and amongst those Tamils who have gone over to 
 the service of Siva and the philosophy that has come to be 
 associated with his name. But the whole of Vaishnavism, the 
 entire worship of Vishnu in all its varieties and sects, — whether 
 in the form of the Rama and Krishna cult, or as a school of 
 Ramanuja and Chaitanya, — bears indications of a more sym- 
 pathetic attitude towards Christianity, and of an inclination 
 to bridge over the vast difference between them. The doctrine 
 
2 50 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 of " bhakti marga " (which may be roughly translated " the 
 way of salvation by faith ") in contradistinction to the " karma 
 marga " (" the way of salvation by works "), and the emphasis 
 laid upon a personal relation of the soul to the deity which is 
 found in the above-mentioned Vaishnavite reformers, is at any 
 rate a point of contact with cardinal verities of the Christian 
 faith. Some students of Indian religions have even tried to 
 prove that in this reformed Vaishnavism Christian elements 
 have found their way into the religious world of the Hindu and 
 have there taken firm root. In any case, the Brahmo Samaj 
 movement has worked mainly along Vaishnavite lines. 
 
 Remarkable too are the scattered points of contact which 
 missionary workers have met with in nearly every part of the 
 country. The most striking of these are the traditions of the 
 Burmese Karens, which are so reminiscent of prehistoric times 
 as recorded in the Bible, and in which modern students of 
 theology find a connection, as yet it is true not worked out 
 in detail, with Chinese-Judaic or with patristic tradition {Basle 
 Miss. Mag., 1864, p. 81 ^^' seq. ; Allgevieine Miss. Zeitschrift, 1878, 
 p. 57 et seq.). Only recently the American Baptist Mission in 
 the mountain forests of Burma discovered a similar people, the 
 Muhsos, near the Chinese frontier. This race also has remarkably 
 coherent traditions concerning the creation of the world, the Fall, 
 the Deluge, the Ten Commandments, etc., which are only to be 
 accounted for by some hitherto unexplained contact with the Old 
 Testament {Evang. Miss., 1905, p. 140). Amongst the Kols is 
 found the remarkable myth of Kasra Kora, the Son of Leprosy. 
 This was the only begotten son of Singbonga, the Sun God, who, 
 clothed in a leprous skin and wandering upon the earth at his 
 father's bidding, was sacrificed by Asur in a red-hot furnace, 
 whence he emerged purified, his body glowing with light and 
 gloriously arrayed (Nottrott, Kols-Mission., vol. i. 62 et seq.). To 
 the east of Hubli and Dharwar, in the South Maratha country, the 
 Basle missionaries found a sect called the Kalagnanas, or " sect of 
 prophecy." These all awaited, in accordance with the prophecies 
 of an old Arabian book, the fall of idolatry and the caste system 
 through the instrumentality of a King who should come from 
 the West, and who was to be the one true God {Basle Miss. 
 Mag, 1 841, p. 284). 
 
 Similar precursory service has been rendered by at least 
 some of the sects, in which Hinduistic elements have been 
 welded together with doctrines and practices borrowed from 
 other faiths, principally from Islam or Buddhism. Such was 
 the case when, particularly in the beginnings of evangelical 
 missions in North India, the Kabirpanths, the followers and 
 disciples of the Vaishnavite Hindu reformer Kabir (i 380-1420), 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 251 
 
 were converted in large numbers ; such too were the first- 
 fruits of the mission to the Kols. In like manner the agents 
 of the Church Missionary Society in the Krishnagar district 
 found adherents among the members of the Karta Bhoja, " wor- 
 shippers of the Creator," a semi-Hindu, semi-Islamic sect, which 
 existed on the strength of its opposition to the tyranny of the 
 Brahmans.^ 
 
 Of greater moment and consequence are those Hindu sects 
 which, under the influence and through the preaching of the 
 missionaries, have assimilated various Christian elements and 
 mingled them, frequently in remarkable wise, with Hinduism. 
 Thus Droese, a missionary at Bhagalpur in Bengal, came into 
 contact with the Satguruwas, who worshipped a " holy book," 
 and when he came to investigate this " holy book," it turned out 
 to be a tract by Sternberg, a member of the Gossner Mission on 
 the Ganges {Die GescJiicJite des Baba-Ji imd seiner Jilngcr, 
 Anklam, 1891). A similar sect, the Satya-gurus, were discovered 
 by the first Baptist missionaries in Eastern Bengal. In the 
 villages surrounding Dacca, the old capital, they found large 
 numbers of Hindu peasants who had abandoned idolatry, who 
 earnestly sought a "true teacher sent from God," and who 
 preserved in an old wooden chest a well-thumbed book which 
 they regarded as a most precious relic ; on closer examination, 
 this proved to be Carey's Bengali translation of the New 
 Testament (G. Smith, Carey, p. 236). The Chamar, Ghasi Das, 
 when on a pilgrimage to Puri from Chhattisgarh, in Central 
 India, came into contact with Baptist missionaries at Cuttack, 
 and learnt so much from them that on his return he forsook the 
 worship of idols and ordered the numbers of people who soon 
 rallied round him to worship God under His " Satnami " or 
 " right name." This sect, which came to be called the Satnami 
 sect, has been a factor of great importance to missionary work 
 in that district {Eva7tg. Miss., 1897, 136 et seq.). In the Punjab 
 the English missionary Bateman discovered the sect of the Chet 
 Ram, who preached the divinity of Christ, the Son of God, and 
 Saviour of the world, who thought, however, that no one could 
 enjoy either inspiration or revelation without first partaking 
 of intoxicating liquor ! All members of this body must at all 
 times carry a New Testament, and as a rule they carry it in 
 their bosom {idid. 1903, p. 275 et seq.). 
 
 This intermingling of Christianity and heathenism becomes 
 a difficult question when it receives a political or social colouring, 
 as has frequently happened in modern times. This was 
 especially noteworthy in the case of Daud Birsa, the " false 
 prophet" of Chota Nagpur, who, seeking to unite in one the 
 
 ^ Stock, History, vol. i. p. 314. 
 
252 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 impressions of Christianity gained in mission schools and by- 
 intercourse with missionaries, and the social and political 
 agitation of the Sardars, raised a revolt and met his doom 
 {Evang. Mission., 1896, p. 91 et seq.\ 1900, p. 193 et seq.). A 
 similar though more far-reaching revolution brought about by a 
 blending of Christianity and heathenism was the well-known 
 Taiping Rebellion in China, the leader of which. Hung Tsiu 
 Tseuen, declared himself to be a younger brother of Jesus {Basle 
 Miss. Mag., 1861, p. 281 ; 1862, p. 57; 1863, p. 164). 
 
 The results of these movements and their generally short- 
 lived connection with missions, owing to their political aims, 
 warn us against overestimating the importance and recruiting 
 force of such movements, astounding as some of them are. 
 Nevertheless, they prove to us how easily tendencies favourable 
 to Christianity are created in the heart of the Indian people, 
 a people ever so susceptible to religious influences, and how 
 tenaciously Christian memories are retained, even under the 
 most unfavourable circumstances. It would be well - nigh 
 impossible to understand how such a mass of disconnected and 
 contradictory elements as popular Hinduism, interpenetrated as 
 it is by the most despicable elements of fetishism and idolatry, 
 could have offered such solid resistance to Christianity, had it 
 not been possessed of three distinct factors by which its 
 marvellous power is upheld. It is these three factors which 
 must be considered as the real hindrances to Christianity^ — the 
 caste of the Brahmans, the general caste system, and Indian 
 pantheism. 
 
 3. The Brahmans 
 
 The Brahmans are the sacerdotal order of India. Yet this 
 does not wholly account for the position they have gained in 
 the life of the people ; moreover, it is scarcely within the power 
 of any one who has not a personal knowledge of India and who 
 has not made a special study of the conditions of Indian life to 
 obtain any right idea of their importance. Common to all 
 primitive religions — and often to others besides ! — is the idea 
 that the efficacy of sacrifices and prayer depends upon the 
 manner in which they are offered. Even in Vedic times this 
 idea was so powerful as to make the Brahmans, as the trans- 
 mitters and conservers of the sacred rites and efficacious chants, 
 the authorised mediators betwixt mankind and the gods. 
 Religious sentiment in India being very pronounced, the position 
 of the priesthood is a correspondingly privileged one. To this 
 must be added the fact that in accordance with that peculiar 
 conservatism which envelops the religious life of every nation, 
 the entire religious ceremonial is exclusively performed in the 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 253 
 
 sacred Sanskrit, a language which has been dead for nearly two 
 thousand years. The Brahmans thus became at once the trans- 
 mitters of Sanskrit literature and the patrons and devotees of 
 science, whose peculiar privilege it was to study and promote 
 the use of Sanskrit. Hereditary rights to influential positions 
 ever tend to a monopolisation of power ; we need only re- 
 member the struggles of the German emperors of the Middle 
 Ages with the hereditary might of the nobility. Strangely 
 enough, the Brahmans have scarcely ever or anywhere attempted 
 to seize the kingship ; but as the only legitimate priests, the 
 patrons of science, as well as the counsellors and ministers of 
 princes, they have established themselves all the more firmly, 
 and have asserted their authority with all the more finality. In 
 a land where, owing to the universal hereditary nature of every 
 calling, the larger number of avocations are pursued for hundreds 
 of years without the slightest intellectual effort or the slightest 
 movement of free thought, there is an obvious twofold result : 
 on the one hand, in the middle and lower classes mental activity 
 is grievously crippled, and on the other, those who are called to 
 the intellectual and spiritual leadership of the people develop 
 a relatively high state of intellectual life, which becomes the 
 heritage of their own families alone. Knowledge is power. 
 When at the time of the great restoration of Hinduism and the 
 conquest of Buddhism, the glory of the well-nigh forgotten gods 
 of ancient India was revived, it was the Brahmans whom this 
 victory principally concerned, and who drew from it the largest 
 amount of advantage. These and other similar considerations 
 gave the Brahmans their great superiority. 
 
 We have already mentioned (p. 20) that at the present time 
 the Brahmans number 14,893,258 souls. As they are really the 
 privileged class, they have special reasons for closing their ranks 
 to intruders. For centuries they have been as good as hermeti- 
 cally sealed against additions from the lower orders. Be it 
 said in passing that the same exclusiveness was not practised 
 in former times, that it probably could not have been, or 
 it would be impossible to account for the manifold variations, 
 both in build and complexion, of the Brahmanical section of 
 the community. If from the 294,361,000 inhabitants of India 
 we subtract the 62h million Muhammadans, the SI million 
 Animists, the gh million Buddhists, and about 2 millions more 
 for religions wholly unconnected with the Brahman faith, we 
 have a remainder of about 212 million Hindus; dividing the 
 15 million Brahmans into this number, we see that the latter 
 compose 7 per cent, of the Hindu population. For a privileged 
 priestly caste, for the unchallenged leaders of a people, that is 
 an enormously high percentage. At all events, the result has 
 
254 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 been that Brahmans have had to enter other calHngs besides the 
 service of the temples and shrines — as a matter of fact at the pre- 
 sent time they are to be found in every imaginable calling and 
 position; with especial predilection have they sought all lucrative 
 and administrative posts, and, in general, any kind of work in 
 which intelligence and intellectual training are necessary. In 
 this way they win the leadership in all departments of in- 
 tellectual and economic life. 
 
 When one considers that this disproportionately numerous 
 Brahman sect, with its selfish class interests, is inseparably bound 
 up with Hinduism, its gods and its temples, its language and 
 its literature, and when one considers further that Hindu India 
 has for fifteen hundred years and more been accustomed to 
 regard the Brahmans as its leaders both in religion and in 
 mental culture, one can understand what a mighty rampart is 
 here raised against Christian missions. It is indeed a remark- 
 able fact that during the course of the nineteenth century 
 relatively more Brahmans have been won over to Christianity 
 than from any other of the classes of society nearest to them in 
 order of importance ; the reason for this, wholly apart from 
 many doubtful cases, is that amongst these men, who, owing to 
 their calling, are constantly occupied with the greatest problems 
 of the universe, there are not infrequently to be found those who 
 are honestly and sincerely groping after truth, and who do finally 
 seek and find in Christianity both salvation and peace. Never- 
 theless, considered as a whole, Brahmanism must be regarded as a 
 great and hitherto unsurmounted obstacle to Christian missions. 
 
 It is an obstacle to missions in another respect also. When 
 such a mighty intellectual force holds truly imperial sway over 
 the entire religious life of the Hindus, it also follows that it will 
 determine absolutely the forms in which that life is expressed. 
 The religious life of the Hindus does in fact flow along channels 
 marked out for it by the Brahmans, and these they maintain with 
 all the tenacity of an order that lives solely upon tradition. 
 These different forms — the temple service, reverence for the 
 Brahmans, pilgrimages, melas, sacred oxen, monkeys, the in- 
 numerable caste usages, the daily round of religious duties, etc. — 
 are all hallowed by tradition, and zealously guarded by the Brah- 
 mans. And Christian missions can make no use of any of these 
 forms ; the Sabbath assemblies of the whole Church, independent 
 of rank or sex, for the preaching of the Word, the rite of baptism, 
 and still more that of eating and drinking in common at the 
 Holy Communion, ordination for the ministerial office apart from 
 class distinction — these, as well as many other things, are to the 
 Hindu entirely novel. It is quite another matter in China and 
 Japan, where from time immemorial widely differing forms of 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 255 
 
 worship have existed side by side ; it is another matter amongst 
 the uncivilised races of Africa, who receive their first ideas of 
 true worship from the observance of that of the Christians, In 
 India this complete contrast between Christian and Hindu forms 
 of worship strengthens the prejudice that the former is some- 
 thing foreign and "un-Indian." This consideration would carry 
 still greater weight, were it not that the power of custom is to 
 a certain extent paralysed by the opinion, inculcated during 
 hundreds upon hundreds of years of foreign dominion, that all 
 that is foreign is good and worthy of imitation. In this matter as 
 in so many others the Roman Catholics have sought to accommo- 
 date their rites to Indian usage. The Protestants, on the other 
 hand, have from the beginning quietly refused to do any such 
 thing : their Puritanic zeal has indeed not infrequently carried 
 them in a contrary direction much farther than we at home deem 
 necessary ; crucifixes and candles have been banished from the 
 altar, and Biblical pictures from the walls of churches, in order 
 that no slightest aid to the idol-worshipping propensities of the 
 Hindus may be afforded. 
 
 4. Caste 
 
 The Brahmans are only enabled to maintain their unique 
 position because Indian society is infinitely subdivided into 
 castes, and because the group of Brahman castes is but the 
 uppermost stratum of a most highly complicated social order 
 whose one uniting principle is caste. We do not intend here to 
 enter upon the thorny question of the origin of caste and its 
 value from the social as well as from the religious point of view. 
 We simply desire to focus the fact that Christianity as introduced 
 into India by the missionaries is at once confronted by an 
 entirely different order of society which offers the most violent 
 opposition to its advance. On its forward march through the 
 peoples of the earth Christianity has found other inimical ex- 
 crescences of society besides caste — ^.^., to mention only two, 
 polygamy and slavery. Towards these it has taken up a different 
 attitude : from polygamy it has from the beginning kept aloof, 
 holding it to be incompatible with its very essence. Slavery it 
 tolerated for eighteen centuries, until at length the new spirit it 
 had implanted had grown strong enough to attack this gigantic 
 evil. But polygamy is nowhere — save perhaps in Central and 
 South Africa — a fundamental portion of the social structure of a 
 people ; at times it is more or less abandoned by non-Christian 
 races, without danger to the social fabric — for instance, in the 
 later days of Judaism and in the Graeco-Roman world of the 
 first and second centuries. Nor is slavery essentially incom- 
 patible with the spirit of Christianity : both the slave and his 
 
256 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 master may be very good Christians and yet remain in their re- 
 spective conditions. Moreover, both polygamy and slavery have 
 only to do in the first place with limited classes of people — the 
 concubines and the slaves — for the most part such subordinate 
 classes as are largely negligible in a consideration of the life of 
 the people as a whole. But the caste question of India is 
 wholly different. It includes every member of the community 
 from the Maharajah on his throne down to the leather-worker 
 and the sweeper, and governs all with equal rigidity from the 
 cradle to the grave ; it prescribes the usages which must be 
 followed at their birth, when they receive their names, at their 
 entry into civic life, at their marriage, at their death, and at their 
 burial. These usages differ in every group of castes, but within 
 the caste are absolutely binding upon every member of it. The 
 caste determines what a boy shall learn, what trade he shall 
 adopt, how he shall carry it on. The caste determines which 
 gods he shall pray to, what sacrifices he shall offer, which temples 
 he shall visit. The caste determines what each individual 
 member of it shall hold to be good and what evil. In short, 
 caste limits the free-will of the individual in such an exclusive 
 manner that, speaking generally, he no longer lives a separate 
 life, but the common life of his caste. This state of things is 
 only aggravated and complicated by the" family system," which 
 whilst not quite universal in India is yet very general in the 
 middle and higher classes of society. Under this system the 
 individual has no private property, but house and home, fields 
 and cocoanut plantations, even the jewellery and ready money, 
 belong to the family as a whole, and individuals only share in 
 these as members of the family ; they are also responsible, how- 
 ever, for the discharge of those duties that fall upon the family, 
 such as the support of the Brahmans of the family, contributions 
 to the temples, and religious festivals, etc. 
 
 The first question one asks in view of these conditions is. 
 Can a Hindu, who has come over to Christianity in baptism, 
 remain a member of the caste of his fathers ? The question can 
 only be answered with a decided and unconditional negative. 
 It is not the missionary who decides the matter, but Hindu 
 society, which irrevocably expels the Christian from caste. 
 This is easily understood when the remarks made abov^e con- 
 cerning the nature of caste and the significance of the Brahmans 
 are remembered. As surely as the latter, in the great majority 
 of castes, are the professional guardians of the laws and usages 
 of caste, so surely do they excommunicate every one who 
 deviates from the special idol-worship of the caste or from its 
 recognised practices in connection with births, marriages, and 
 deaths, who has intercourse with members of other castes, or 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 257 
 
 who even only eats and drinks with them (as for instance at the 
 Lord's Supper). Thus the question is already decided, and this 
 decision will stand as long as the Brahmans exercise authority 
 over the religious life of the Hindus, Every Hindu who becomes 
 a Christian knows that ipso facto he will be driven out of the 
 caste of his fathers. There are, it is true, expiatory ceremonies, 
 by virtue of which " outcastes " can again be received into the 
 membership of their caste ; and these ceremonies can, according 
 to the time and circumstances, be simplified or elaborated by 
 the Brahmans ; but the one indispensable condition imposed 
 upon a candidate for readmission is that he shall promise 
 absolute submission to the rules of the caste and the Brahmans, 
 And for a Christian that is out of the question. As a result 
 there ensue the many painful rendings asunder of those knit 
 by the closest ties of blood relationship, and the frequent and 
 difficult legal question as to whether, and if so to what extent, 
 the outcaste shall have any claim upon the family property, 
 and as to the amount for which he can sue before the law. This 
 section of Indian mission work is rich in martyrdoms character- 
 ised by the noblest Christian heroism and self-denial. This is 
 where heathendom and Brahmanism make the life of a young 
 Christian unbearable, even without carrying persecution to the 
 point of blood. On the other hand, it is the self-evident duty 
 of missions to declare clearly and frankly that to remain in the 
 old heathen caste system is impossible and incompatible with 
 the Christian calling. When the Roman Catholics with their 
 extensive policy of accommodation give a wide berth to any 
 such declaration, they are shutting their eyes to the facts of 
 the case. But when societies favouring the caste system, like 
 the Leipzig Missionary Society, carefully guard such a declara- 
 tion as the foregoing by provisos, and theoretically admit the 
 possibility of castes being cleansed from all the accessaries of 
 heathenism by the spirit of Christianity, and afterwards becom- 
 ing a fit home for Christians, and so on, they practically recognise 
 the case as we have stated it. Other societies have sought by 
 all means in their power to deepen and broaden the gulf between 
 caste rites and those of the Christian Church, 
 
 Another question, and one that ought not to be confused 
 with the foregoing indisputable one, is this : Ought any regard 
 to be paid to difference in caste descent within the native 
 Church? Is this distinction to be cherished, tolerated, or 
 attacked ? It is on this point alone that all the hot disputes 
 over caste have turned, and notably the greatly discussed 
 dispute in the Leipzig Society. This latter conflict is all the 
 more noteworthy since it is, as far as we know, the only example 
 of a question of missionary theory being discussed with passion 
 17 
 
2 58 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and vehemence in Germany, — and as we look back over it we 
 are compelled to exclaim, " What a pity ! How useless it 
 was ! " — for the missionary public of Germany was not in a 
 position to form an independent and adequate judgment upon 
 this most difficult and complicated of all missionary questions 
 in India, Let us quietly and dispassionately consider the pros 
 and cons of the matter. 
 
 The arguments of the opponents of caste are as follows : It 
 is certain that caste was originally neither an Aryan nor yet 
 a Dravidian institution. We are acquainted with a prehistoric 
 Aryan age when caste did not exist, and the non-Aryanised 
 Dravidian forest tribes are even to this day without it : caste is 
 therefore simply a social order which has come into existence 
 during the course of history ; it ought then to be cast out in its 
 turn in a similar process of historical development by the 
 coming upon the scene of higher spiritual forces, and especially 
 by those of Christianity. Owing to the general religious 
 character of Hindu life and the paramount influences of the 
 Brahmans, the caste system has become so overgrown with 
 heathenism and idolatrous customs and opinions that it is a 
 hopeless undertaking to attempt to cleanse it from them. This 
 heathen element in the caste system preponderates to an ex- 
 ceptional extent in South India, where it has been introduced 
 and perpetuated principally by the power of the Brahmans, and 
 where in the hands of this priestly caste it has become a means 
 towards the intellectual subjugation of the peoples of South 
 India. That the spirit of caste, which declares those higher in 
 the scale of caste to be persons of nobler mould ; which practi- 
 cally deifies the Brahmans ; which confers upon every caste an 
 inherent character of sanctity, the laborious preservation of 
 which is inculcated as one's chief moral duty; which imposes 
 upon the higher castes a haughty exclusiveness towards those 
 lower in the scale, and which limits the virtues of brotherly love 
 and brotherliness to the narrow circle of one's own caste — that 
 this spirit is from first to last incompatible with the spirit of 
 Christianity cannot be doubted for one moment. Corporate 
 Christian life is hopelessly interrupted, if within what may 
 possibly be a very small Christian community those belonging to 
 higher castes should have no dealings with those belonging 
 to lower. It is bad enough when it finds expression in home 
 and in civil life by a refusal to eat in common, and a mutual 
 denial of sons and daughters in marriage ; it is thoroughly 
 mischievous when castes begin to demand separate entrances 
 into a church, seats at a distance from one another, a special 
 order of precedence at the Lord's Supper, special plots in the 
 churchyard, etc. In congregations composed of members 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 259 
 
 of various castes the growing together into a fellowship 
 of the saints is made unspeakably more difficult ; in con- 
 gregations consisting of members of only one caste converts of 
 a lower status are accepted either unwillingly or only after hot 
 disputes, and those of a higher order hold themselves aloof, 
 because they are unwilling to belong to the low " Christian 
 caste." And the employment of the staff of native helpers and 
 teachers is rendered much more difficult if catechists or 
 preachers of lower descent are not to exercise their ministry in 
 Christian congregations of a higher order, e.o^. if Pariahs may not 
 minister to Sudra congregations. 
 
 On the other hand, and taking the arguments in the same 
 sequence, the friends of caste argue as follows : Caste is beyond 
 all question a very ancient institution, and for thousands of 
 years it has been rooted in the Indian mind and consciousness. 
 Christian missions in India increase the difficulty of their task, 
 already a sufficiently onerous one, to the limits of utter hope- 
 lessness by writing the removal of the caste system upon their 
 programme. As the main object of missions is to Christianise 
 whole masses of the population, the most important question 
 for them is not therefore, " What is desirable at the present 
 elementary stage of missionary progress in India?" but, " What 
 idea have we formed of a national Church for India, broad 
 enough to include all her peoples and tribes and tongues ? " 
 It is true that caste is associated with numerous heathen and 
 idolatrous customs, but that ought not to blind us to the fact 
 that included in the term " caste " there are wide and deep 
 strata of a purely social and economic character with which 
 the trades and handicrafts are united as with a kind of guild, 
 and which lay down important and far-reaching rules for the 
 civil life of the people. Christian missions can and should only 
 undertake the duty of leading all their converts into the enjoy- 
 ment of a bright and well-founded Christian faith ; beyond this 
 they should endeavour to interfere as little as possible in civil 
 and secular affairs. That the pagan caste spirit and the heathen 
 devil of pride must be cast out is obvious ; but it is very 
 questionable whether this will really be best accomplished by 
 tearing up social distinctions by the roots and causing Brahmans, 
 Sudras, and Pariahs to meet on one level and to have intercourse 
 one with the other. In the Middle Ages in Europe there were 
 ranks and guilds which were very widely separated, but for all 
 that they contained though not an ideal, yet still a healthy and 
 living form of Christianity ; it is surely more than questionable 
 whether it be prudent to graft the modern democratic notions of 
 America on to what are even now the early mediaeval conceptions 
 of South India and thereby turn the heads of the converts. It 
 
26o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 would appear to be a wiser plan, through the conscientious preach- 
 ing of the gospel and the faithful shepherding of souls, slowly to 
 break down the caste spirit from within, and step by step to 
 accommodate the laws and discipline of the Church to this new- 
 born Christian spirit. " The supreme principle must be that 
 everything incompatible with life in Christ must be abandoned, 
 whilst all which does not oppose the recreating energy of the 
 gospel may remain. Above all, distinctions of caste must 
 never, especially at the Holy Sacrament, be allowed to exist 
 within the Church. . . . Further, ordination may only be granted 
 ... to such as specifically promise never to allow themselves 
 to be hindered in discharging the duties of their office through 
 any caste differences, and also that they will especially cultivate 
 fellowship at the Lord's Table with all Christian brethren in any 
 case where the avoidance of such fellowship would seem to cast 
 a slur upon their brotherly love," — thus writes a decided friend 
 of caste. Dr. Graul, Director of the Leipzig Missionary Society. 
 In conclusion, it is a fact that by definitely fighting caste within 
 a Church its corporate life is in many cases fostered ; but it 
 ought not to be forgotten that the Church and, with it, the 
 Christianity it presents, thereby loses much of its attractiveness 
 for the natives. That the middle and higher classes of Sudras, 
 from whom during the eighteenth century the principal influx 
 of converts was received into the native Church, have withdrawn 
 themselves more and more from contact with Christianity, and 
 that the different Churches have sunk more and more to the 
 level of the Pariahs and Panchamas, is surely a consequence of 
 the sharp opposition to caste which has prevailed since the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century. And even though the 
 employment of native helpers within the Church is facilitated 
 by the removal of caste barriers, their usefulness amongst the 
 heathen is correspondingly curtailed, for it is a fact taught by 
 experience that a Brahman or a Sudra, who in addition to his 
 high rank is also a Christian, will gain the ear of his fellow- 
 countryman far more easily than a Brahman who is married to 
 a Pariah woman. 
 
 In this connection we are not required to give an unqualified 
 decision for or against, it is merely our duty to give some 
 account of this most difficult and important of all problems 
 connected with Christian missions in India, and by so doing 
 to create an appreciation of the varied caste-strifes narrated in 
 this book. From the point of view of the friends of caste it is 
 to be regretted that the indispensable demands of Dr. Graul 
 with regard to specific points of Church life have only been 
 complied with in a perfunctory and unsatisfactory way even 
 in the Leipzig Missionary Society : in some churches there are 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 261 
 
 still separate entrances for Sudras and Pariahs ; in many cases 
 separate sittings in the interior of the church are provided ; 
 with regard to the order of precedence at Holy Communion 
 there are still tenaciously observed rules, which guard the 
 precedence of the Sudras ; the entry of a Pariah Christian into 
 a Sudra chapel may give rise to serious dissension, and even 
 permission to inter Pariah corpses in Sudra cemeteries is by no 
 means everywhere obtainable. P'rom the point of view of the 
 opponents of caste it is equally regrettable that they are not 
 in a position to attempt something definite against the caste 
 evil. About the middle of last century many sought to 
 eradicate caste forcibly by means of festival days and love- 
 feasts. More recently they have been obliged to acknowledge 
 that mixed marriages between Sudras and Pariahs or others 
 cannot be forced upon the people ; that eating a meal together 
 as a test is a delicate matter which cuts right to the roots of 
 domestic life and which must be handled with great prudence ; 
 that those sections of the population which accede without 
 opposition to all the demands of the missionaries with regard 
 to discarding former caste usages, are often invertebrate, servile, 
 and unreliable creatures, and that the Sudras who cling firmly 
 to their civil reputation, and on that account oppose the 
 demands of the missionaries, do not in reality compose the 
 worst portions of the community. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Protestant missionary world of India has 
 maintained the view that caste must be entirely suppressed 
 within the Christian community, and often as the present 
 writer has considered the question and gone through the 
 material at his disposal, he is yet unable to come to any other 
 conclusion than that this position is the right one. Recognise 
 as we may the weighty reasons which the Leipzig Tamil 
 Mission — the only Society which is friendly to caste — makes 
 use of and urges with energy and skill, we cannot but deplore 
 the fact that just on such an important question this Society 
 holds itself aloof from the consensus of opinion of the whole 
 body of evangelical missionary societies.^ 
 
 Both as regards the position adopted by Protestant missions 
 towards Indian heathenism — which is summed up both religiously 
 and socially in caste — and as regards the overthrow of the 
 caste spirit and caste customs within the Christian Church, 
 caste is truly a difficult obstacle in the path of missions. And 
 it only affords small consolation to know that both of the other 
 
 ^ For further information cf. Warneck's Missioitskhre, iii. i, p. 317, note; also 
 the highly instructive treatise of Prof. Warneck in the same book, pp. 317-345 ; my 
 own Nordindische Missionsfahrtcn, pp. 257-294 ; the Census Report Jor Jgoi, pp. 
 489-559, and the volume of Ethnographical Appendices. 
 
2 62 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 great religions which have made headway in India, Buddhism 
 and Muhammadanism, fully conscious of what they were about 
 and as a matter of principle, have taken a firm stand on this 
 same argument, that caste is incompatible with the spirit of 
 their religion and must therefore be abandoned by their 
 adherents. Neither is it a great consolation to know that 
 during all the stages of its history, from the time of Buddhism 
 onwards, religious reformers have continually arisen and founded 
 sects in whose polity and programme the suppression of caste 
 has ever been one of the leading items. We know too little of 
 the secret history of these two religions and of these sects, but 
 so far as we are able to trace their development we notice that 
 in nearly every case a time of religious exaltation and definite 
 triumph over caste has been succeeded by a period in which 
 the caste demon has again gained the upper hand, and that not 
 only, outwardly considered, have the sects which so decisively 
 separated themselves from their Hindu surroundings finally 
 evolved into new castes, but that within the sects themselves 
 the old caste distinctions have revived with perhaps redoubled 
 energy. 
 
 5. Pantheism 
 
 The chief rampart of heathenism in India, however, is 
 Indian pantheism.^ Whereas we find as the substratum of 
 Indian society innumerable peoples, tribes, and groups of Pariahs 
 and low-caste folk, who are mostly animists or demon- 
 worshippers, and whereas the great broad belt of the intermediate 
 strata is composed of the countless classes and sects of those 
 who worship a multifarious succession of gods and religious 
 myths, the highest stratum of all, equally widespread and 
 exceedingly influential, is made up of those theosophically and 
 philosophically inclined spirits who have become more or less 
 consistent adherents of one of the six orthodox systems of 
 Hindu philosophy and who profess their tenets. And just as 
 animism extends its influence for a considerable distance in 
 
 ^ The Qudkn are the monumental edition of the Sacred Books of the East (up to 
 1893, 41 vols.) compiled by Prof. Max Mtiller in collaboration with English and 
 German scholars ; and also the Bibliotheca Indica, published in Calcutta, in which 
 Sankara's great commentary on Badarayana's Brahma Sutra {1863) is of especial 
 value. Based on these original texts the following expositions are of particular value : 
 W. Dilger, Die Erlosu>tg des Menschen nach Hinduismus und Chrjstentiim, Basle 
 1902 — a masterly monograph, whose conclusions for the most part are adopted in these 
 pages ; Paul Deussen, Das System d,'S Vedanta, Leipzig 1883 ; Oldenberg, Keltgio7t des 
 Veda ; Prof. Dr. Gar be, Die Sa/nkhya Philosophic ; ibid., Samkhya Yoga ; Dahlmann, 
 Nirvana; Gough, The Philosophy of the Upanishads. Further, Bose, Hindu Philo- 
 sophy; SirM, Monier- Williams, y«(^2a« Wisdom ; Dr. von Schroder, Indiens Literatur 
 und Kultur. 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 263 
 
 an upward direction, so also do the speculative influences, 
 emanating from the highest and philosophical section of the 
 community, strike their roots far down into the main mass 
 of Hinduism, impregnating it to an extent that philosophy 
 has never done amongst any other civilised race, many of 
 its tenets having become the common property of the whole 
 Indian people. 
 
 That a strong philosophic and meditative trend of thought 
 characterised from the beginning the Aryans who migrated to 
 India — as also their cousins german the Greeks and the 
 Teutons — we may learn even from the earliest portions of the 
 Vedas ; in these we find the fruitful germs of pantheistic 
 speculation, buried it is true beneath a realistic view of life 
 which regards the abode of the gods, sin, atonement, death, and 
 felicity after death, as undoubted realities. In the broad fields 
 of the Upanishads the pantheistic germs and impulses have 
 grown exuberantly ; everywhere the way is being prepared for 
 new conceptions of life and of the world. These manifold 
 tendencies were then taken in hand by the six orthodox schools 
 of philosophy (the " Darsanas ") and reduced to ordered 
 philosophical systems. By far the most influential of these are 
 the twin-schools of Sankhya and Yoga, which teach a crude 
 dualism of mind and matter (purusha and prakrit), strongly 
 deny the existence of a world-creating and world-preserving 
 Deity, and dissolve the world of spirits into so many atoms. 
 Still more important are the Mimansa and Vedanta schools, 
 which teach a logical and consistent monism. 
 
 It cannot be supposed that we intend in these pages either 
 to follow up this theological and philosophical development in 
 detail or to expound the tenets of these schools of philosophy. 
 For this an adequate literature is accessible. We shall merely 
 seek to show, from some of the most widely accepted categories 
 of belief, in whatdirect and absolute contradiction to Christianity 
 all these conceptions of life stand. 
 
 In reality only Brahma, the absolute Self, exists ; He alone 
 is possessed of real existence. All the phenomena of nature, 
 even separate individuals, possess no real existence. Just as 
 ether is a uniform continuous whole and suffers no essential 
 change when it passes into empty vessels of varying capacity, 
 but on the contrary is instantly reunited to the universal ether 
 the moment the vessels are broken, so is Brahma in relation to 
 natural phenomena. " Just as that disc of light, the sun, mirroreth 
 itself oft in varying waters, so as it was predetermined appeareth 
 in varying forms the unborn Self, the God, in the bodies of 
 men. . . . The essence of the soul is truly but one, yet is it 
 seen split up into as many fractions as is the number of the 
 
264 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 children of men; simple is it, yet manifold as the moon's 
 reflection upon the face of the waters. ... In Him from whom 
 they come, who sustaineth them all, even in the Lord of All 
 (Brahma), doth all creation find an origin, a continuance and an 
 end, just as the bubbles of the surf are dissolved in the billows 
 whence they have been tossed. . . . The whole world is verily 
 naught save the absolute Self, and of different essence to that 
 Self is no created thing. And like as vessels consist only 
 of dust, so doth the wise man see in his own self totality" 
 {Sankai-a's A tinabodha). 
 
 This absolute sole-existent Brahma has, however, nothing 
 but negative attributes. He is perfectly changeless, eternally 
 without desire, without will, self-absorbed and without self-con- 
 sciousness. Three attributes are, it is true, ascribed to Him, 
 being, thought, and felicity ; but this felicity only means freedom 
 from sorrow, and sublimity above the cycle of birth, death, and 
 transmigration of soul, whilst being and thought are specifically 
 declared to be identical. Thus this absolute Being bears no 
 kind of relation, least of all a conscious relation, to anything 
 outside Himself — to a co-existent world, for instance. 
 
 Now the actual task of philosophy is to lead the individual 
 to realise that he himself is only Brahma, is nothing but 
 Brahma. " There is no ' I ' nor ' Thou,' all is one ; it is either all 
 ' I ' or all * thou.' The idea of duality, of dualism, is entirely 
 false, and the entire universe is the result of this false knowledge " 
 {Sivami Vivekananda, Brahmavadin, vol i. p. 310). "The 
 teaching of the Vedanta comes to this, then, that in the universe 
 ' thou ' and ' I ' are absolute, not parts of the absolute, but the 
 whole. Thou art the whole of that absolute, and it stands in 
 the same relation to all other things. For the idea of a part 
 finds in it no place" [ibid. ii. p. 225). 
 
 Naturally for him who is thus absolutely one with Brahma, 
 who is identical with Him, there is neither sin nor evil ; what 
 he does, Brahma does or appears to do, — for in reality all deed 
 is only semblance, i.e. Maya. In one Upanishad the following 
 words are placed in the mouth of the god Indra : " Know me 
 only; that is what 1 deem most beneficial for man, that he 
 should know me. . . . And he who knows me thus, by no 
 deed of his is his life harmed, not by the murder of his mother, 
 not by the murder of his father, not by theft, not by the killing of 
 a Brahman. If he is going to commit a sin, the bloom does 
 not depart from his face " {Kaiishitaki Upanishad). 
 
 Likewise there exists for such an one no redemption ; it is 
 not necessary. The individual is none other than the blissful, 
 passionless Brahma, and he only need recognise this to be free 
 from all the sorrows of this earthly life and also from all the 
 
RELIGIOUS TROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 265 
 
 misery of soul-transmigration — for these things are all illusion, 
 Maya. For him who has won his way through to real exist- 
 ence, to Brahma, this whole world vanishes away like morning 
 mist before the rising sun. " The fetter of the heart is broken, 
 all doubts are solved, all his works (and their effects) perish, 
 when He has been beheld who is high and low " {ATundaka 
 Upan. ii. 2, 8). " Self is a bank, a boundary, so that these 
 worlds may not be confounded. Day and night do not pass 
 that bank, nor old age, death and grief; neither good deeds 
 nor evil deeds. All evil-doers turn back from it, for the world 
 of Brahma is free from all evil" {Chdndogya Upan. viii. 4, i). 
 " One already redeemed in his bodily life is he, who expelling 
 ignorance, recognises the indivisible Brahma as his own being, 
 and who realising the indivisible Brahma to be his own exist- 
 ence, and having become free from all fetters through the 
 removal of ignorance and its consequences, — the multiplication 
 of good works, doubt, error, and the like — is absorbed com- 
 pletely into, and is made one with, Brahma " ( Vcdantasara, 34). 
 
 The duty of the learned and devout consists, therefore, in 
 a withdrawal from this outer world of semblance and deception, 
 and in living solely in and for Brahma. " He into whom all 
 objects of desire enter, as water enters the ocean, which 
 (though) replenished, (still) keeps its portion unmoved — he 
 only obtains tranquillity ; not he who desires (those) objects 
 of desire. The man who, casting off all desires, lives free from 
 attachments, who is free from egotism, and from (the feeling 
 that this or that is) mine, obtains tranquillity. This, O son 
 of Pritha ! is the Brahmic state ; attaining to this, one is never 
 deluded ; and remaining in it in (one's) last moments, one 
 attains (brahma-nirvana) the Brahmic bliss." ^ Yes, that is it, 
 Nirvana extinction ; for since Brahma, the absolute Self, wholly 
 lacks self-consciousness, this latter must of course be extin- 
 guished in all those who are absorbed in Brahma. 
 
 That is, as far as its main lines go, the picture of the world 
 in which the Hindus live and meditate — an illusion entirely 
 removed from this world of realities, from the strife and the 
 sorrows of earthly existence, an illusion which not only sets 
 itself in deadly opposition to all objective knowledge, but even 
 more to every activity of the personality. It is unnecessary to 
 point out that such a conception stands diametrically opposed 
 to Christianity at all points. This Brahma has nothing in 
 common with the God of Love, this redemption bears no 
 analogy to the blessed entrance into life everlasting ; this 
 setting aside of sin and evil principally contradicts the ethical 
 positiveness of Christianity. And the serious part of the 
 ^ Bhagavad Gita, ii. 70-72. 
 
2 66 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 matter is, that this philosophical pantheism employs the same 
 conceptions — God, the world, sin, salvation, blessedness, etc. — 
 as Christianity, only these conceptions have an entirely different 
 content, and the Hindus, who are held captive in their vision 
 world, as in an enchanted garden, find the comprehension of 
 Christian doctrine thereby rendered unspeakably difficult. The 
 main error is that from the absolute Brahma the conception of 
 personality, ix. of differentiate thought, of purposeful will, 
 of love seeking an object, is expunged, and in its place we are 
 merely offered Brahma, in a condition of dreamless age-long 
 slumber, in which all thought, feeling, and will remain in entire 
 unconsciousness. And as is Brahma, so is the seeker after 
 Brahma, the wise man ; and this gazing upon the unconscious 
 impersonal Brahma deadens all personality in the individual, 
 destroys the power of comprehending what is meant by in- 
 dividuality, and banishes the sense of sin and conscience to 
 the shadowy realms of Maya and mirage. 
 
 The outer physical world, however, is too tangible a reality, 
 and its existence had been too candidly acknowledged by the 
 earlier poets and philosophers of India, for Vedic philosophy 
 thus easily to ignore it. The theory of the threefold being 
 was invented to account for the discrepancy. A state of true 
 and actual being appertains to Brahma alone. On the other 
 hand, man is often deluded by a state of being utterly unreal, 
 as for instance in the " Fata Morgana," or when a wanderer by 
 night takes a piece of rope for a snake, or a bush for a footpad. 
 Betwixt these two states of being, the real and the unreal, there lies 
 an extensive region of relative or conventional being. In so far 
 as this partakes of Brahma, it is true existence ; but in so far as 
 factors other than Brahma appear potential within it, it is unreal 
 existence. Within this region lies the whole of the physical world. 
 
 A second principle has been incorporated with this Absolute 
 Self of Brahma, that of illusion or nescience (Maya = illusion, 
 Avidya or Ajnana = nescience). Whilst this second principle 
 is evolving, the Brahma is girt about with a veil of concealment 
 (Upadhi), is subject to limitations and determination, and the 
 absolute is thereby individualised in particular forms and 
 phenomena. This process is one of gradual progress, and 
 higher and lower manifestations of relative "being" can be 
 distinguished, in some of which the Brahma is comparatively 
 pure, whilst in others He is entirely concealed beneath that 
 which is material. This may also be termed the emanation of 
 Brahma. Thus the philosopher differentiates four stages or phases 
 of the Brahma : (i) the " fourth stage," the absolute Brahma, " the 
 incomprehensible, the imperceptible, the unthinkable, the un- 
 namable. He who is unattainable without a knowledge of the 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 267 
 
 oneness of self, the one in whom that which is manifold finds 
 culmination, the motionless, the blissful, the only one ; (2) the 
 "deep-slumbering" Brahma, "at one with Himself, an indis- 
 tinguishable mass of knowledge, formed of beatitude, enjoy- 
 ing beatitude, approachable through consciousness. . . . This 
 is the womb of all things, whence all things created have 
 proceeded and whither they shall all return " ; (3) the Brahma 
 of the " dream-state " or " dream-sleep " ; and (4) the Brahma in 
 the " state of wakefulness," These and other similar gnostic 
 constructions are attempts to bridge over the gap between 
 the absolute self-contained self and the world of reality. 
 
 That is as much as to say that for the enlightened philo- 
 sopher, the wise man, there exists nothing ; for in reality there is 
 nothing but the absolute Brahma ; the concealing veils of 
 Brahma (Upadhi) are nothing but illusion (Maya) or nescience 
 (Avidya). But it is here that the philosopher distinguishes 
 between an esoteric philosophy destined only for the wise, the 
 initiated, and an exoteric, intended for the ignorant. And he 
 manipulates the latter as though it were concerned with actual 
 entities, in spite of the fact that everything is only Maya and 
 Avidya. 
 
 In the wide region of relative " being," which is a subject of 
 endless speculation and which in its entirety constitutes the 
 " lower Brahma," there are three groups of ideas which are of 
 importance to Christian missions. It is amazing with what 
 tenacity, universality, and implicitness two doctrines are 
 accepted throughout India, from the most transcendental 
 philosopher down to the very meanest Chandal — the doctrines 
 of the transmigration of souls, and of retribution. It has not 
 yet been clearly explained whence the Indian belief in soul- 
 migration is actually derived, but it is certain that in the oldest 
 Vedic literature we find neither mention nor suggestion of it. 
 However that may be, it is the universal belief that at death 
 the soul quits the human body and for a time betakes itself to 
 the moon or to the Yama Hell. After a longer or shorter time 
 it migrates to a second body, and on death again ensuing to a 
 third, a fourth, etc., and this transmigration is repeated infinitely, 
 until the saving knowledge of the all in all has dawned upon the 
 soul and it becomes aware of its identity with Brahma. There 
 it finds rest and passes by death into Brahma, where it expires 
 (Nirvana). 
 
 This doctrine of the transmigration of souls is inseparably 
 bound up with that of retribution, according to which every 
 deed receives with absolute certainty and mathematical exact- 
 itude its due recompense of reward. As this retribution only 
 very partially takes place during this life, a man's works follow 
 
268 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 his soul into his next incarnation, and in such a manner that 
 they determine the character and degree of the new birth, 
 whether Brahman or Chandal, whether cow or snake, or even 
 noxious worm. This law of retribution is inexorable and 
 inevitable, in spite of the fact that there is no God to execute it, 
 and although there is no self-consciousness by which recollec- 
 tion of a previous state of existence may be brought to mind, 
 nor the deeds ascertained which have merited the precise form 
 of incarnation. It will easily be seen what a convenient basis 
 this doctrine affords to the caste system of India, and how it 
 fosters the arrogance of the higher castes, — for have not the 
 latter merited their high station by their virtuous behaviour in 
 a former existence, and is not the Chandal in his low degree 
 reaping the reward of long-past crimes ? 
 
 Now who is it that suffers this transmigration ? What is 
 the nature of the " soul " that migrates? Differing infinitely as 
 to details, the schools of philosophy are yet one in the belief 
 that the soul possesses a " pure " body, which is built up from 
 the " pure fundamental substances " of matter. Amongst views 
 that are widely disseminated we find those of the Sankhya 
 school. According to them, the soul is made up of three 
 fundamental substances of the Prakriti (nature or matter) : 
 Sattva or light, Ragas or twilight, and Tamah or darkness. 
 "Bewilderment, fear, grief, sleep, sk t'l, carelessness, decay, 
 sorrow, hunger, thirst, niggardliness, wr.Ah, infidelity, ignorance, 
 envy, cruelty, folly,shamelessness, meanness, pride, changeability, 
 these are the results of the quality of darkness (Tamah). 
 Inward thirst, fondness, passion, covetousness, unkindness, love, 
 hatred, deceit, jealousy, vain restlessness — these are the results 
 of the quality of passion (Ragas). By these he is filled, by these 
 he is overcome, and therefore this elemental Self assumes mani- 
 fold forms, yes, manifold forms " {^Maitrayana BrdJimana Upan., 
 iii. 5). Thus does the "substance" of the soul condition and 
 determine its character and the main lines of its moral conduct. 
 
 All these categories of thought are likewise wholly opposed 
 to the Christian gospel, and the more widely and the more 
 generally their principles are recognised, so much greater is the 
 obstacle to the comprehension and adoption of Christian truth. 
 This doctrine of retribution closes both heart and ear at once to 
 teaching concerning the forgiveness of sins and the Last Judg- 
 ment. The fear of the transmigration of the soul makes a 
 man's whole salvation consist in his being set free from the 
 necessity of reincarnation ; and this materialistic doctrine of the 
 soul devolves the curse of evil-doing simply upon the general 
 composition of soul " substance," and by so doing destroys all 
 sense of guilt and all aspiration after moral regeneration. 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 269 
 
 Thus this world of Indian philosophy, despite its many 
 profound speculations and its surprisingly beautiful isolated 
 dicta and conceptions, is on the whole thoroughly at enmity 
 with the preaching of the gospel. It opposes to such preach- 
 ing a wall hard to be passed over, and demands of the 
 missionaries in the endless disentanglement of its various 
 systems and schools of thought intellectual labour such as is 
 necessitated by no other religion. It is true that the degree 
 to which this philosophy is accepted differs with the various 
 strata of the population. The actual Brahman schools of 
 philosophy, their Tols and Patashalas in Benares, Ajodhya, 
 Nadiya, Bombay, etc., are very hard soil for missionary work ; 
 all who would work in those districts must not only have a 
 thorough knowledge of Indian philosophy, they must also be 
 complete masters of Sanskrit, speaking it fluently and even 
 elegantly. There have been but few missionaries who have 
 accomplished this : Carey in Calcutta, Wilson in Bombay, and 
 in later years Johnson, the Church Missionary Society's 
 representative at Benares, the only missionary at the present 
 time versed in the North Indian schools of philosophy.^ In 
 this difficultfield the profound as well as scientifically valuable 
 writings of Pandit Nehemiah Goreh^ are of importance. 
 
 But the peculiar thing about India is that these philosophical 
 conceptions have penetrated deep down into the heart of the 
 people, in fact they have in many cases become the common 
 property of all the Hindus. A predisposition towards the 
 transcendental, the influence of the climate, the historical 
 development of the people, have all combined with these same 
 philosophical ideas to cause the mind of the Hindu to turn 
 away from the real world of actuality to that of abstract specu- 
 lation, to a world of metaphysics in which he may brood and 
 dream. To how great an extent the Hindus are dominated by 
 this peculiarly Oriental state of mind is proved by the highly 
 instructive article of the Rev. H. Haigh, a Wesleyan missionary, 
 on " The Average Hindu " {Allgeju. Miss. Zeitschrift, vol, xxiii. 
 p. 384 et seq.). Only in recent times have evangelical missions 
 commenced to take this world of Hindu ideas into serious 
 consideration ; we shall give some account of this part of the 
 subject in the chapter on the literary side of missionary 
 work. 
 
 This philosophical bent of the Indian thought-world renders 
 particularly difficult the transference and translation'of Christian 
 ideas into the Indian tongues. Not that we find in them any 
 
 ^ Cf. InielL, 1905, p. 26, " In the Sanskrit Colleges and Monasteries of Ajodhya." 
 "^Sketches of huiian Christians,-^. M,"! et setj.; Altge?n. Miss. Zeitschrift, 1903, 
 p. 518 f/ seq. 
 
27 Q HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 such lack of expressions for higher truth and for abstract terms 
 as is frequently the case with uncivilised peoples ; on the con- 
 trary, such expressions abound in all the civilised languages of 
 India. But the terms in question are all more or less interfused 
 with pantheism, or with the conception of life developed there- 
 from, and they therefore call up associations of ideas in the 
 minds of hearers and readers which are unfavourable to the 
 apprehension of the truth. Moreover, since these languages 
 possess both an ancient and a modern literature, a missionary 
 is not in a position to coin new expressions at v/ill ; such 
 expressions would fail to be understood, and would take no root 
 in the language. We adduce several examples from South Indian 
 languages, which will at the same time serve to demonstrate 
 the extreme care with which a translator is forced to proceed.^ 
 
 The number of names of gods is amazingly large. If one 
 were to ask a Tamil " munshi " how many expressions there are 
 for the gods in his language alone, he would answer, "It is 
 impossible to say, there are so many." But which dare we use 
 to translate the Christian word " God " ? One of the most 
 popular is certainly " Swami," " lord," " possessor," or " owner" ; 
 but the same word is also quite generally a title of honour given to 
 the Brahmans. " Kathavul," " the highest being," is too pantheistic 
 to be adopted for literary work, though in preaching it is 
 largly made use of. " Isvara," " lord," is also common to all the 
 Indian languages, and is found in many compounds, but in 
 philosophical terminology it is a much used technical expression 
 for a phase of the lower Brahma in union with Avidya, i.e. it 
 describes God as caught in the toils of Maya ; for Christian 
 purposes, therefore, the word is useless. The Roman Catholics 
 have chosen a combination of Isvara, Sarvisvara, the " Lord of 
 All " ; but it is a name which to the Hindu has a decidedly foreign 
 ring, and it has taken no hold upon the language, whilst to 
 philosophers it is a thoroughly pantheistic term. The excellent 
 Tamil translator among the Danish veterans, Philip Fabricius, 
 following the example of Walther, chose for " God " the word 
 " Paraparan," " the Absolute." The great disadvantage of this 
 word is that the middle long a may be used in a nega- 
 tive as well as an intensive sense, and it may just as soon be 
 said to describe God as the " Relative," as the " Absolute." The 
 English translators amongst the evangelical missionaries to the 
 Tamils have therefore preferred the word " Devan," and yet even 
 that only means " one God amongst many." In Malayalam 
 Dr. Gundert has taken from the same root the word " Daivam," 
 which corresponds pretty nearly to our own " Godhead." None 
 
 ^ Stosch, Im fernen Indien, p. 134; W. Dilger, Das Kingen mit der Landes- 
 sprache in der indischen Missionsarbeit, p. 18 «/ se^. 
 
RELIGIOUS PROBLEMS OF INDIAN MISSIONS 271 
 
 of these words appear to be wholly satisfactory or free from 
 objection. 
 
 With regard to the word " redemption," the anxiety of the 
 translators lest the brightness of Christian truth should be 
 overcast by any shade of pantheism was so great that they pre- 
 ferred to reject the well-known and, to the Hindus, sweet- 
 sounding words " mukti, moksham,"' and instead to adopt 
 Dravidian derivatives from the roots " vindeduka, vindukolka," 
 " to buy free." 
 
 Christian baptism has its " analogon " in the levitical ablutions 
 and in the bathings of the Brahmans — which are everywhere 
 termed "snanam." It has therefore been deemed wiser to differ- 
 entiate " baptism " by a distinguishing suffix, and as the name for 
 heathenism is "Ajnana," "uncertainty," the suffix " jnana," " true 
 wisdom," has been chosen; the compound "jnanasnanam," " bath 
 of true wisdom," is the term thus obtained. It cannot be said to 
 be a clever term, either philologically or essentially, and for this 
 reason it has failed to maintain its place, but the question is, 
 what to substitute for it. The Baptists would like a word which 
 unmistakably means " to dip " to be adopted ; the English are 
 in part satisfied with the Anglo-Greek word *' baptism " ; the 
 Germans use the simple, handy, but easily misconstrued "snanam," 
 " bath." 
 
 The expressions " spirit " and " soul " present great difficulties 
 if both are used referring to the human spirit, and especially 
 when they are written one after the other. It is just in this 
 region of psychology that Indian philosophers have invented the 
 most complicated theories, all turning more or less on the words 
 in question. For " spirit," the old Sanskrit word "atma" (Ger. 
 atem\ " breath," has been retained in Malayalam ; it denotes 
 the innermost self of a man, his spirit, though in thoroughly 
 pantheistic language it stands for the" world-soul," the "absolute 
 spirit." For " soul," when it accompanies " spirit," Dr. Gundert 
 fixed on " dehi," " the possessor of a body, the spirit dwelling 
 within a body," but this word means precisely the same as " atma," 
 and cannot therefore be used in the triad " body, soul, and spirit," 
 if " atma " be made use of. Neither can- it be used with the 
 possessive pronoun ; it is impossible, e.g., to say " my dehi." 
 Latterly, following the example of the Kanarese translators of 
 the Bible, the word " prana," " life-breath," has been preferred. 
 
 At every new revision of the translation of the Bible and in 
 every literary undertaking in any of the Indian languages the 
 task has once again to be grappled with as to how a fitting 
 medium, or adequate terminology, for the conveyance of 
 Christian truth may be arrived at in languages permeated with 
 the very spirit of pantheism. It is at such times that one sees 
 
272 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the magnitude of the task of Christianising the popular con- 
 sciousness of India, suffused as it is with the age-long growth 
 of pantheism, of transforming it into a pure vessel meet to 
 contain Divine truth and grace. The consideration of any 
 of the problems of Indian missions thus briefly outlined 
 strengthens the conviction that the main thing in India is not 
 the increase of the missionary staff, nor yet the increase in 
 the number of mission stations, — that is to say, the extensive 
 development of missionary organisation, — but far rather is it 
 an intellectual conflict concerning the profoundest speculations 
 of human thought in matters of religion, of sociology, and of 
 knowledge of mankind — a conflict in which Christianity and its 
 representatives must give irrefutable evidence of the presence 
 of the Spirit of might and of power. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 
 
 I. The Anglican Episcopate 
 
 When Wilberforce, Grant, and their friends joined the fight that 
 was being waged over the re-issue of the Company's Charter in 
 1 813, their object was not only to gain an open door for all 
 missionaries but to obtain at the same time the establishment of 
 the Anglican Church in India; and the 12th Resolution of the 
 new Charter accordingly ran : — 
 
 " Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee {i.e. of 
 the House of Commons) that it is expedient that the Church 
 Establishment in the British territories in the East shall be 
 placed under the superintendence of a Bishop and three 
 Archdeacons, and that adequate provision should be made from 
 the territorial revenues of India for their maintenance," 
 
 Accordingly an episcopal see was created in Calcutta, and, 
 at first, archdeacons were located in the three Indian capitals. 
 But when British territory in India began to expand so 
 enormously, and when the first four Bishops of Calcutta were 
 suddenly cut off by death, it became clear that at the next 
 renewal of the Charter (1833) independent bishoprics must be 
 founded and endowed at both Madras and Bombay. And since 
 Ceylon, as a Crown colony, does not come under the same 
 administration as the rest of India, it was also found possible 
 without too great difficulties to found and endow a see at 
 Colombo (1845). A"cl therewith all that could be done along 
 the line of parliamentary legislation and State endowment was 
 accomplished, and for the next three decades episcopal 
 development came to a standstill. Only in the last quarter of 
 the century did it revive in a movement which had its parallel 
 in every branch of missionary work during the same period. The 
 Tractarian Movement had been at its height in England since 
 1850, and with its enthusiasm for the historic Church and ritual- 
 istic ideals had enormously raised the standing and increased 
 18 
 
2 74 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the influence of the episcopal office. It became a dogma in 
 these High Church circles that a mission without a bishop 
 is incomplete, and therefore ecclesiastically unsound. The 
 episcopal duties of ordination, confirmation, and church con- 
 secration were so rigorously reserved for bishops that it was 
 found their number would have to be considerably increased if 
 they were to be able to minister to the rapidly increasing and 
 widely scattered Anglican community on the mission field. As 
 the same needs existed in all the British colonies, the Colonial 
 Bishoprics' Fund was inaugurated in England in 1841 with the 
 special object of furthering the endowment of new bishoprics 
 in the colonies. But in India it was difficult to find just cause 
 why new bishoprics should be founded. By Act of Parliament 
 almost the whole of British India had been portioned out as 
 the peculiar domain of the four existing bishops ; only 
 by a new Act of Parliament could these boundaries be 
 changed, and it was deemed hopeless to introduce such 
 an Act. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce, the son of the great philanthropist, 
 sought to avoid this difficulty by bringing a motion before 
 Parliament in 1853 whereby permission was to be given for the 
 creation of missionary bishops specially for native churches 
 within the then existing bishoprics. The motion, however, fell 
 through. Other means had to be devised. At first an attempt 
 was made (in 1877) to appoint Sargent and Caldwell, the two 
 most distinguished missionaries in the two Anglican Tinnevelly 
 Missions (the C.M.S. and the S.P.G.) to the office of Superin- 
 tendents, and as such to ordain them as suffragans to the Bishop 
 of Madras. That was purely an ecclesiastical action ; but the 
 bishops thus consecrated had for that very reason no spiritual 
 jurisdiction save only as representatives of the Bishop of Madras, 
 A more practical plan was discovered. The territorial limita- 
 tions of the different dioceses corresponded exactly with the 
 amount of land which had been under English suzerainty in 
 1 81 3 or 1833 as the case might be. There was nothing to 
 prevent, and that without any new Acts of Parliament, the 
 creation of new bishoprics in districts which had accrued to the 
 English since 1833. The Punjab and Burma were cases in 
 point, and on these grounds the two bishoprics of Lahore and 
 Rangoon were founded in 1877. But the same reasoning would 
 not serve in the case of Travancore or Cochin, as these two 
 countries were only Protectorates, and not English possessions. 
 And yet, both because of the difficulties of access to these 
 countries and because of the superabundant episcopal equip- 
 ment of the rival Syrian and Romish Churches, it was especially 
 desirable to have an Anglican bishop there. The movers in the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 275 
 
 affair took refuge in the so-called " Jerusalem Statute," i.e. the 
 parliamentary decree by virtue of which the bishopric of 
 Jerusalem had been founded in 1841 ; thereby the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury and York were empowered, with the assistance of 
 other bishops, "to consecrate British subjects, or the subjects or 
 citizens of any foreign kingdom or state, to be Bishops in any 
 foreign country, and, within certain limits, to exercise spiritual 
 jurisdiction over the ministers of British congregations of the 
 United Church of England." A bishopric was founded in 
 Travancore in 1879 on this basis. It was felt to be an especially 
 grievous state of things that the immense and thickly populated 
 United Provinces should be included in the see of Calcutta, and 
 a reason was sought whereby these provinces might possess 
 their own episcopate. The first proposal that could be devised 
 was to create a bishopric at Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, for 
 that region had only come into the hands of the English in 
 1856, and did not therefore, according to the strict letter of the 
 law, belong to the see of Calcutta. Futhermore, it was argued 
 that no one could hinder the Bishop of Calcutta from deputing 
 to a newly appointed bishop, " on the basis of consensual 
 compact and canonical obedience," the pastoral charge and 
 oversight of the clergy and churches within a certain clearly 
 defined area ; and an Act of Parliament (the Colonial Church 
 Act, 1874) was passed granting the Indian bishops permission 
 to ordain suffragan bishops. It was by virtue of this Act that 
 the Bishop who had been appointed to Lucknow in 1893 took 
 up his residence at Allahabad and henceforward exercised 
 episcopal authority over the whole territory of the United 
 Provinces. Similarly, the bishopric of Ranchi was created in 
 1890 for the Anglican missions in Chota Nagpur. The 
 bishopric of Tinnevelly also was now placed on a new and, 
 from an ecclesiastical point of view, more correct footing than 
 had been the case since the agreement of 1877, by the election 
 of a properly appointed Bishop. And in recent days (1903), and 
 upon this same basis of " consensual compact," an eleventh 
 bishopric has been created at Nagpur for the Central Provinces 
 and for Central India. Probably even this does not represent 
 the last step in the development of the Anglican episcopacy in 
 India. 
 
 Our main object, however, is to trace the influence of this 
 episcopal development upon the missionary history of India. 
 The first Bishop, Middleton (18 14-1822) was quite out of 
 sympathy with missionary work ; he endeavoured to act as if 
 missions were non-existent. He would not issue ecclesiastical 
 licences to the missionaries, lest he should thereby recognise 
 them as regularly appointed clergymen, and he refused to 
 
2 76 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ordain native preachers. But this unsympathetic attitude is in 
 the long-run untenable wherever an Anglican episcopate exists ; 
 according to general Anglican opinion there devolve upon the 
 episcopate, as such, rights and duties which should influence the 
 entire sphere of missionary operations. The Episcopal Synod 
 which sat in Calcutta in 1877 expressed itself with particular 
 exactness on this point. Its resolutions ran : — 
 
 " That the Bishop of every diocese is in the last resort 
 responsible for all teaching given and all work done within 
 his diocese in the name and under the authority of the Church. 
 
 " That in accordance with this principle every appointment 
 to the discharge of spiritual functions within the Church ought 
 to be made with due recognition of the ultimate right of the 
 Bishop to be consulted on such appointment and to exercise a 
 veto upon the same. 
 
 " That it follows from the same principle that like recognition 
 ought to be accorded to the ultimate right of the Bishop to be 
 consulted with regard to any change in the management, order 
 of service, or place of worship, of any congregation." 
 
 Even Bishop Middleton had had the unpleasant impression 
 that the position he had taken up was an unwarrantable one, 
 and on one occasion he had expressed himself in the drastic 
 words : " I must either license them or silence them." His 
 successor, the gracious and gifted Heber, at once took up 
 a precisely opposite position, and succeeded in retrieving, by 
 his own all-attractive and winning personality, the false step 
 of his unbending High Church predecessor. The great problem 
 that lay before the episcopacy in this new and only correct 
 attitude now was : " How are the rights and responsibilities of 
 a Missionary Society, as a body which sends out and controls 
 missionaries, to be differentiated from the all-embracing pre- 
 rogative of the Bishops?" The High Church Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel settled the question simply by 
 unreservedly handing over the entire direction of its missionary 
 work to the bishops, and contented itself with becoming 
 practically a collecting agency for missionary gifts. This was 
 done without any misgiving, because the Society could feel 
 sure that owing to the widespread influence of High Church 
 principles, by far the greater number of bishops would be of 
 its way of thinking, and would therefore carry on its work in 
 the spirit in which it had been commenced. But the evangelical 
 Church Missionary Society would simply have dissolved, would 
 have abandoned the cause of asserting and demonstrating its 
 evangelical principles, had it similarly surrendered to the 
 bishops. It was compelled, therefore, to defend and to fight 
 for its rights in the face of episcopal opposition. So early as 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 277 
 
 1 81 8, before the point at issue had become a burning question, 
 it had cleared the ground by setting forth the difference between 
 " external " and " internal " missionary affairs : " internal affairs," 
 to wit, "the spiritual power and authority to ensure the con- 
 scientious discharge of the duties of the sacred calling," belong 
 to the bishops ; the Society can never assume control over the 
 consciences of the missionaries in the exercise of their spiritual 
 functions. On the other hand, "external affairs," such as the 
 founding of stations, the appointment or removal of missionaries, 
 the enrolling or dismissal of catechists and other helpers, the 
 regulation of salaries, the erection and maintenance of buildings, 
 etc., belong to the Society, which moreover cannot relinquish 
 the right of appointment or dismissal of missionaries according 
 as it approves or condemns their theological beliefs or their 
 moral conduct. These views Henry Venn, the greatest 
 Missionary Secretary the Church Missionary Society ever 
 possessed, subsequently worked into a skilfully developed system 
 which for well balanced principle may be commended as a 
 masterpiece of ecclesiastical statesmanship. But it was in the 
 actual field of practical experience that the episcopate and the 
 Society were to adjust their differences. Strangely enough, the 
 first conflict arose precisely through that Bishop (Daniel Wilson, 
 of Calcutta, 1 832-1 858), who was the most pronounced and 
 devoted friend of the Church Missionary Society. Bishop 
 Wilson deemed it within his episcopal right to claim that he 
 only should have the appointment of missionaries, and also 
 that at any time he thought fit he should be able to cancel the 
 appointment thus made. For two whole years, 183 5- 1836, 
 a hot epistolary war was waged ; the Society was entirely 
 against the surrender of so important a privilege, as this would 
 simply be to confer upon the Bishop equal rights with itself in 
 the direction of its own missionary work. But all was of 
 no avail ; before the decided views of Wilson, who had all 
 the traditional ideas of episcopal authority on his side, the 
 Society was bound to give way. In the first paragraph of the 
 agreement drawn up between the Bishop and the Society, the 
 latter admitted the Bishop's right to make and to cancel all 
 missionary appointments. Another Bishop (Spencer of Madras, 
 1837-1849) at once deduced the corollary that only the Bishops, 
 and not the Society, had the right to revoke appointments. A 
 gifted young missionary of Madras, Humphrey, had adopted 
 extreme High Church views, and Spencer wished to retain this 
 man in spite of the wishes of the Society, and all the more so 
 because he himself had High Church tendencies. In this case, 
 however, the Society won the day, and obtained recognition of 
 its own right to sever its connection with missionaries when 
 
278 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 according to the best of its judgment it was desirable so to do. 
 For four decades the work was continued along the lines of th&se 
 early compacts ; and then new and difficult conflict suddenly 
 threatened the Society. 
 
 In 1875 the Rev. R. S. Copleston, a man of High Church 
 tendencies but withal highly gifted and zealous, was nominated 
 as Bishop of Colombo. How times had changed since 
 Middleton's days ! Copleston at once eagerly set to work to 
 learn Singhalese and to study Buddhist problems ; he also 
 demanded of all the chaplains under his orders, who were 
 scattered far and wide throughout the island, that they should 
 vigorously prosecute missionary work amongst the natives by 
 whom they were surrounded. But in almost all the chaplains' 
 districts there were Church Missionary Society's missionaries, 
 catechists, and teachers. Would not hopeless confusion ensue 
 if the chaplains at any time should also begin evangelistic 
 work ? Copleston thought the matter could be easily settled — 
 the chaplains should be simply regarded as chief shepherds of 
 the flock, and the missionaries and their helpers be placed 
 under their direction. But most of the chaplains were young 
 men, whereas many of the missionaries had grown grey in the 
 service ; the chaplains were in the main strict High Churchmen, 
 the missionaries without exception Evangelicals. 
 
 The problem was not so simple after all, and out of this 
 disagreement concerning authority between Copleston and the 
 Directors of the Church Missionary Society there grew a 
 protracted and many-sided conflict, which for five years, 
 1 876-1 880, agitated the hearts and minds of all concerned, 
 both in England and Ceylon. Questions long unsolved were 
 brought into the discussion one after the other. 
 
 The Bishop claimed powers of direction over the Tamil 
 Coolie Mission, a work amongst the Tamil coolies on the 
 Ceylon tea plantations, administered by the Church Missionary 
 Society in conjunction with members of other Churches. The 
 Committee, however, consisting in part as it did of Presbyterians 
 and Dissenters, refused to submit to the dictation of the High 
 Church Bishop. The latter considered it both his right and his 
 duty formally to consecrate all churches and chapels-of-ease 
 where divine worship and the Holy Communion were regularly 
 celebrated. But according to the cumbrous laws of the 
 Anglican Church, every place once consecrated by a bishop 
 must for ever remain under his jurisdiction and belong to the 
 English State Church ; the Committee, therefore, which was 
 admirably suited to the ever varying conditions under which 
 its labour was carried on, refused to consider for a moment 
 any such episcopal consecration. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 279 
 
 The strife continually assumed new phases, though this is 
 not the place to depict them in detail.^ Eventually the Arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury and York, in conjunction with three 
 other highly respected bishops, undertook to restore peace by 
 investigating the whole of the intricate questions at issue and 
 by pronouncing their formal opinion thereon. Their decision 
 was in almost every point favourable to the Church Missionary 
 Society: appointments once made were not to be cancelled 
 except for most serious reasons, and the latter were always to 
 be indicated ; besides those for small districts, more general 
 appointments were to be made for wider tracts of country ; 
 laymen in the service of the Society (unordained catechists, 
 school teachers, etc.) were only to be under the control of the 
 Bishop while actually discharging pastoral duties. The main 
 thing was that the decision of the prelates recognised the 
 relative independence of the Church Missionary Society in the 
 exercise of its missionary activities. And Bishop Copleston 
 was loyal enough to bow to the decision and to base upon its 
 conclusions a peace with the Church Missionary Society which 
 was equally honourable to both parties. 
 
 This crisis had demonstrated one thing most clearly — the 
 keen desire of the bishops to obtain an independent interest in 
 work on the missionary field. Great efforts in this direction 
 were made in more than one diocese. As has already been 
 mentioned in the sketch of the development of missions on 
 p. 156 et seq., Bishop Middleton founded the "Bishop College" 
 in Calcutta, a valuable but also very responsible heritage for his 
 successors, among whom Daniel Wilson in particular strove to 
 bring the all but lifeless foundation into a thriving condition. 
 This same Daniel Wilson cherished another great scheme. 
 
 In connection with the beautiful Cathedral built principally 
 at his own cost in Calcutta, he was desirous of founding several 
 canonries — three at least — and of entrusting considerable 
 missionary undertakings to their incumbents. With charac- 
 teristic generosity and energy he furthered this project with 
 contributions from his private purse. A few years before his 
 death, however, he made over to the Church Missionary Society 
 the entire collected funds and everything thereto appertaining, 
 "as he had become convinced that Indian missions could be 
 better carried on by such a missionary society working from 
 the homeland than by mere independent effort." In several 
 of the Indian sees a governing body, the so-called Board 
 of Missions, under episcopal presidency, has been created, 
 in order to carry on missionary work under the direct super- 
 
 ^ Cf. the illuminating description in Stock's History of the C.J\I.S., lij. 
 203-215. 
 
2 So HISTORY OF LNDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 intendence of the Bishop ; this has been the case in the diocese 
 of Colombo since 1845, and in that of Calcutta since 1885. 
 They have at their command, however, only a portion of the 
 necessary funds and contributions, by far the larger part of their 
 means being voted to them by the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel. For instance, the Calcutta Diocesan Board has 
 the yearly disposal of over 61,000 rupees ; of these, 15,000 are 
 collected in India, and 46,000 come from England. 
 
 The two Anglican missionary societies, the Church Mission- 
 ary Society and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 
 in conjunction with the intimately associated brotherhoods and 
 sisterhoods, and the evangelical Church of England Zenana 
 Missionary Society, compose one great group of the missionary 
 agencies working in India; owing to incomplete returns in the 
 last Census (1901), it is impossible to ascertain the relative pro- 
 portion of the missionaries in this group to those of other 
 missionary societies at work in India. Ten years earlier (in 
 1890), of 857 ordained missionaries there were 203, and of 711 
 female workers 223, who were members of this group ; it thus 
 represented at that time a quarter of the entire European staff 
 on the Indian mission field. According to the last Missionary 
 Census in 1901, 184,274 of the 808,210 Indian Christians, or, 
 according to the Government Census taken at the same time, the 
 figures of which on this point are, however, probably unreliable, 
 305)917 out of 825,466 Christians, belong to Anglican missions. 
 
 Yet however influential these figures represent the position 
 of Anglicanism to be on the Indian mission field, the Intelligencer, 
 the leading organ of the Church Missionary Society, is un- 
 doubtedly right when it calmly answers the far from modest 
 demands of the Anglican bishops — at their Calcutta Synod in 
 January, 1901, — that the " Church of England " be the " Church of 
 India," by stating that in view of such figures there is for the 
 present neither reason nor prospect for any such assumption. 
 
 2. Vernacular Preaching 
 
 Consecutive reading in nineteenth century missionary literature 
 shows that a decided change of opinion concerning the relative 
 position and importance of the main branches of missionary 
 labour has taken place. In the first quarter of the century 
 elementary schools for the heathen received special attention, 
 whilst the principal successes were awaited from the translation 
 and dissemination of the Bible. Then from about 1825 
 vernacular preaching, whether at bazaars or melas, in the towns 
 or the villages, became the centre of interest. It was deemed 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 281 
 
 the peculiar task of the missionaries and the crown of their 
 work. Later still the idea became current that the great 
 branches of the work are co-ordinate, and that any dispute con- 
 cerning their superiority is, as Bishop Sargent once jestingly 
 remarked, like a quarrel amongst the five fingers for the pre- 
 eminence. 
 
 Almost every missionary society can point to missionaries 
 who have been exceptionally gifted preachers in the vernacular, 
 and who have unweariedly journeyed up and down the country, 
 scattering the good seed of the Word of God, Three methods 
 of vernacular preaching have been developed: actual itinerant 
 preaching in the thickly populated village districts, preaching at 
 the great melas or popular religious festivals, and preaching in 
 the bazaars. In all these branches there have been many 
 missionaries who have laboured with great faithfulness. Such 
 faithfulness is truly wonderful when we see men going out daily 
 single-handed, and for a long period of years in succession, to 
 preach in the bazaars, perhaps without ever seeing any visible 
 results of their self-sacrificing seed-sowing. Rev. A. F. Lacroix, 
 a Swiss missionary, is reputed to have been the greatest vernacular 
 preacher. He went out to Chinsurah in 1821, under the Nether- 
 lands Missionary Society, and in 1827 he passed into that of the 
 London Missionary Society, in which he remained until his 
 death on July 8th, 1859. He had a command of Bengali such 
 as was possessed by no other European. By his attractive 
 delivery, his sympathetic expression, and the felicitous use of 
 really idiomatic Bengali, he everywhere drew together vast 
 crowds of listeners, and his convincing eloquence and his speech 
 so rich in Oriental illustration charmed and fascinated the 
 Hindus. 
 
 Another great itinerant preacher was McComby, a Baptist 
 missionary who for forty-five years was indefatigable in the 
 prosecution of long preaching tours, but who, like Lacroix, died 
 without leaving a single convert, each furnishing a striking 
 example of the relative fruitlessness of purely itinerant preaching. 
 
 In spite of the recognition in principle of the importance of 
 vernacular preaching, there were, however, important factors at 
 work in all the societies, the tendency of which was to narrow 
 its scope or to crowd it out of existence. The most con- 
 tinuously operative of these is of course the Indian climate, 
 which for two-thirds of the year, during the hot and rainy seasons, 
 hinders or altogether forbids a European undertaking extensive 
 travelling in almost every part of the country. And when 
 the rainy season falls so unfavourably as it does in the Tamil 
 country, where it coincides with the " cool " season (November to 
 February), there remains no single part of the year which is 
 
282 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 suitable for such work, and preaching tours of any length can 
 only be undertaken when, and so long as, the weather remains 
 fairly favourable. Throughout the greater part of India the 
 " cool " season, or Indian winter, is the time when itinerant 
 preaching is engaged in. During the other eight or nine 
 months the missionaries remain at home. This is a serious 
 limitation, and it is only partly compensated for by the fact 
 that when at home the missionaries can preach daily in the 
 bazaars. Far and away the greater number of them live in large 
 towns, in the bazaars of which an ever changing crowd of 
 listeners is to be found. 
 
 It lies in the nature of things that during the greater part 
 of the year, when the missionaries are more or less bound to 
 remain in one place, they have adapted their work to their 
 environment. First and foremost comes the pastoral care of 
 the native Christians. Then we must take cognisance of a 
 feature peculiar to Indian missions, the building up in almost 
 every Church of a somewhat cumbersome institutional organisa- 
 tion ; such are the high schools and elementary schools, the boys' 
 and girls' boarding schools, the industrial branches and orphan- 
 ages, the printing establishments and book stores, the train- 
 ing schools for teachers and preachers, and the many agencies 
 of slow growth which demand the constant presence of the 
 missionaries. There are proportionately few missionaries who 
 are free from the responsibility of one or more such institu- 
 tions, to say nothing of missions like that of the Leipzig 
 Society to the Tamils or Gossner's K61 Mission, where the duty 
 of adequately caring for the widely scattered native churches is 
 generally so onerous as to demand the entire strength of the 
 limited missionary staff, and to leave but few opportunities for 
 itinerant preaching. It cannot be denied that these heavy 
 institutional burdens, with their daily and serious demands 
 upon the missionaries, greatly hinder the work of vernacular 
 preaching — which amongst other things demands great freedom 
 of movement. 
 
 We shall assuredly not be in error if we add yet a third to 
 these two notorious hindrances to this kind of work, namely, 
 the impression that exists of the relative inadequacy and 
 uselessness of sporadic preaching to the heathen. At the melas, 
 where hundreds of thousands of religiously excited people 
 gather together, this impression is often brought home to the 
 missionaries with overwhelming power and greatly to their 
 discouragement, and it demands men of sturdy force of 
 character like Samuel Hebich, of the Basle Society, to continue 
 to preach, with ever fresh courage, to the apparently boundless 
 sea of listeners by which on such occasions the missionaries are 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 283 
 
 surrounded. And there is often practically the same feeling 
 when the vernacular preacher proclaims the Word of God in 
 villages where it has perhaps never been preached before, and 
 where perhaps no messenger of the gospel will again set foot 
 for another decade. Only gradually in the course of the century 
 have missionaries come to realise the extent to which the 
 Hindus live in a wholly different world of thoughts and ideas. 
 The first proclamation of the gospel rushes past the spiritual 
 ear of such men unmarked and uncomprehended, and long 
 preparation and tillage of the field of the heart is necessary 
 before Christian ideas can find soil in which to grow. This is 
 the reason why the almost universally adopted method of 
 the middle of last century has been abandoned of journeying 
 through entire provinces and travelling many hundreds of 
 miles preaching the gospel — as was done, for instance, by such 
 a giant in the faith as Rev. George W. Ziemann, a Gossner 
 missionary at Ghazipur, on the Ganges. With regard to 
 vernacular preaching, the wisdom of the old saw is abundantly 
 apparent : " Limitations reveal the master." 
 
 It is interesting to read how once and again the missionary 
 societies have made great efforts to assign to vernacular 
 preaching its right place, even at the cost of pushing on one 
 side the burden of the various organisations connected with the 
 Church. In two great societies, the English Baptists and the 
 American Congregationalists (the A.B.), an entire change of 
 policy was effected after the visit in 1854-185 5 of their Foreign 
 Secretaries, Rev. E. B. Underbill, LL.B., of the Baptist Mission- 
 ary Society, and Drs. Rufus Anderson and Augustus Thompson 
 of the American Board. The English high schools were partly 
 given up, the elementary school system was reduced to as 
 narrow limits as possible, and all other forms of organisation 
 were cut down in order to leave the missionaries free for two 
 great tasks, the care of the churches and the preaching of the 
 Word. In the Basle Missionary Society, too, each successive 
 visit of its inspecting Secretaries resulted in closer attention 
 being paid to vernacular preaching. In 1 850-1 851 Josenhans 
 arranged that at least two missionaries — Ammann for South 
 Kanara and Hebich for the entire Indian work of the Society — 
 should be set apart for the principal task of vernacular preaching. 
 Otto Schott, on the occasion of his visit in 1 880-1 881, would 
 greatly have liked to bring about in the Basle Missionary 
 Society a similarly radical change to that accomplished by 
 Underbill and Thompson in their respective societies. Under 
 the present " Inspector," Dr. Theodor Oehler, a model 
 system has been introduced throughout the whole sphere of 
 the Basle Society, by which every station, in addition to those 
 
2 84 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 engaged in other branches of the work, shall have, as far as 
 possible, one missionary whose sole charge is vernacular 
 preaching, and who shall be assisted by a body of helpers 
 specially trained for this kind of work. 
 
 The English Church Missionary Society has worked along 
 other lines. In 1854 it inaugurated in North Tinnevelly an 
 imposing Itinerant Preachers' Mission, in connection with which 
 devoted men like Ragland, Meadows, David Fenn, and Gray 
 journeyed hither and thither preaching, often at the cost of 
 great self-sacrifice. In the Punjab] two highly gifted and 
 zealous missionaries. Maxwell Gordon and R. Bateman, the 
 so-called "Fakir" missionaries, carried on those extensive 
 preaching tours often termed the " Punjab Itinerancy," out of 
 which have grown the stations of Batala, Narowal, Bahrwal- 
 Atari, and Tarn Taran. At this stage, however, a new plan 
 was advocated by General Haigh. Bands of associated evan- 
 gelists were to be sent out, unmarried men, ready to face any 
 difficulty, and maintaining one modest menage in common ; 
 they need not have enjoyed a liberal education, but they 
 were to be specially cut out for work among the village 
 populations. 
 
 The first experiment was made in 1889 with three young 
 evangelists in the Nadiya district of Bengal, and the result was 
 so satisfactory that similar bands of evangelists were quickly 
 created in Lucknow (for Oudh), in Calcutta (for the thickly 
 populated villages in its neighbourhood), and among the Gonds 
 of Central India. As a general rule a clergyman is at the 
 head of the band, and he has from two to five earnest young 
 brethren as his assistants. In every case a kindly disposition 
 and excellent health are required for this very exhausting work, 
 and many of them are only able to accomplish the first stipu- 
 lated period of five years. 
 
 In the last decade vernacular preaching has taken a new 
 lease of life in nearly all the missionary societies. Everywhere 
 the desire is making itself urgently felt, that, as work has for 
 so long a time been confined to the large towns, the great 
 broad surface of the land with its ever crowded but more simple 
 and approachable population should now be more adequately 
 ministered to. "Village Missions" is nowadays one of the 
 most attractive of battle-cries, and who can wonder when ninety 
 per cent, of the Hindus live in villages ? Two auxiliaries receive 
 especial favour at the hands of present-day vernacular preachers 
 — limelight views as accompaniments to an evening lecture 
 or address, and " bhajans," or Christian hymns, sung to the 
 melodies, and attired in the poetic garb, of the songs of the 
 Hindus themselves. Special merit in the adaptation of 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 285 
 
 " bhajans " as helps in open-air preaching has been shown by 
 the American Maratha Mission (the A.B.). 
 
 3. Literary Work 
 
 In addition to vernacular preaching, literary work has been 
 coming to the front to an ever increasing extent since the 
 beginning of last century. Even the veterans of the Danish 
 Mission did not neglect this department of missionary work. 
 Ziegenbalg proved himself in this respect, as in so many others, 
 a truly great missionary, by undertaking extensive literary 
 enterprises in Tamil as well as in German and Latin. In 
 Tamil his first love was Bible translation ; after that he began 
 to compile those books which were indispensable for the young 
 Christian communities : a small hymn-book, a Tamil transla- 
 tion of Luther's Catechism, a summary of dogma {Tlieologia 
 tJietica in lingua tamulica, revised and newly arranged in 1856 
 by Revs. Dr. Graul and Cordes), and a few tracts. His most 
 important work in German was a Genealogy of the Gods of 
 Malabar, an exposition of South Indian mythology based on 
 comprehensive and reliable studies ; unfortunately this was not 
 printed until 1867, when it was edited by Wilhelm Germann ; 
 then, however, it was immediately translated into English, and 
 according to Benfey, the philologist, it is even to-day " a usable, 
 and indeed a useful work." Further, he compiled a BibliotJieca 
 Malabarica, a critical consideration and index of 150 Tamil 
 books, or, as we may term it, a history of Tamil literature in 
 parvo. Other missionaries emulated the successes of Ziegen- 
 balg, at any rate in the composition and publication of works 
 in Tamil and other Indian tongues. In Tamil especially, 
 there arose during the eighteenth century a not inconsiderable 
 Christian literature. At the head of this stand the brilliant 
 translation of the Bible by Fabricius, and his magnificently 
 successful adaptations of German hymns, the " heart-melters," 
 as pious Tamils named them. Then we ought to mention a 
 Church History by Rev. Theodor Walther, which went through 
 three editions (Madras, 1735, 1739, 1809), an exposition of the 
 Lord's Prayer by Christian Friedrich Schwartz (2nd edition, 
 1770), and a "Conversation," also by Schwartz. In addition 
 to these works, there were also published Latin-Tamil, Tamil- 
 Latin, English-Tamil, and Tamil-English Dictionaries, transla- 
 tions of H. Muller's Erquickstnnden, Starcke's Leidensgeschichtc, 
 Bogatsky's Schatzkdstlein, Arndt's Paradiesgdrtlein, Wahres 
 CJu'istentum, etc. Especially was the over-zealous Benjamin 
 Schultze continually occupied in issuing publications not only 
 
2 86 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 in Tamil but also in other Indian languages, such as Sanskrit, 
 Telugu, Hindustani, etc. The printing-houses of both the 
 Tranquebar and Madras missions were never allowed to stand 
 idle, and even in far-away Halle Tamil publications were 
 rapidly given from the press. 
 
 But this literary activity of the eighteenth century was a 
 mere prelude to that developed in the nineteenth century. It is 
 highly significant that at the turn of the century we find the Men 
 of Serampore with their world-wide horizon and their burning 
 desire to unlock all the Indian languages and to translate the 
 Holy Scriptures into them all. It is unfortunately impossible 
 to do anything like justice to the extensive literary work of 
 Protestant missions. Therefore, just as we took occasion in 
 our description of the life and work of Carey and Duff to 
 consider their literary productions, so we shall find that the 
 detailed history of the individual missions in India will supply 
 us with an opportunity of mentioning their most important 
 literary products. We must content ourselves here with a few 
 general remarks. 
 
 The literary activity of evangelical missions has been 
 principally manifested in four directions. The first and most 
 important of these has been the effort — undertaken with an 
 amazing measure of enthusiasm and erudition — to translate 
 the whole Bible into at least all the more important languages 
 of India. This magnificent and tremendous work we shall 
 discuss shortly. A second great and well-nigh unlimited de- 
 partment of literary activity has been the exploration of India 
 from every point of view as a theatre of war, in preparation of 
 and as a foundation for the actual work of missions. This 
 department includes investigations of the religious history of 
 Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and the divers sects 
 of India; also ethnographical research into castes, manners and 
 customs, and ways of thinking among the Indian peoples ; philo- 
 logical research resulting in grammars and dictionaries of all the 
 greater and more cultured Indian languages, and the opening 
 up and the putting into print of countless Indian dialects, up 
 to that time unwritten and wholly without literature of any 
 description. The third great department of literary effort has 
 been the creation of a well-furnished literary arsenal for use 
 in work amongst the heathen of all peoples and castes, polemic 
 writings against Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, caste, 
 Hindu abuses, etc., and expository writings containing positive 
 statements of Christian truth and the evangelical conception of 
 life. Finally, the fourth department — one second in importance 
 only to the first and the one most largely cultivated — is the 
 providing of healthy and satisfying spiritual nourishment for 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 287 
 
 the native Christian community : hymn-books, Hturgies, books 
 on homiletics for catechists and preachers, weekly and monthly 
 magazines, etc. In the peculiar circumstances prevailing in 
 India one might almost add, as a fifth widely diversified and 
 greatly cultivated field of labour, the preparation of school- 
 books and text-books for high and low, for English as well as 
 native boys' and girls' schools, and, coupled with this, the task 
 of providing healthy and suitable reading for the youth growing 
 up in the schools of the country. 
 
 (a) Bible Traiislatioti ^ 
 
 Although Romish missions had been at work in India fully 
 three hundred years before evangelical missions, and although 
 they had numbered within their ranks such distinguished lin- 
 guists as Nobili and Beschi, they did not produce one single 
 translation of the Bible, only a falsification of it, the notorious 
 Esur Veda. Faithful to their ecclesiastical traditions, these 
 Romish missions took no interest whatever in placing the 
 Bible in the hands of the heathen in their own language. 
 Evangelical missions have had it all the more laid upon their 
 heart to make the Word of God easily accessible to all the 
 peoples of India. Since Protestant missions are based entirely 
 on the Scriptures, and carry as their sole weapon the Word of 
 God, they fight with open visor in giving the Bible itself to the 
 natives, for they are perfectly convinced their cause will be 
 advanced thereby. Hence the work of translating the Bible 
 has from the first occupied a distinguished place on the 
 programme of evangelical missions. The work accomplished 
 is of a very high order, in fact it is in many ways perfect 
 in its kind. The task is a stupendous one. In India 
 147 different languages and dialects are spoken ; far and away 
 the larger number of these were not even reduced to writing, or 
 at any rate were not yet moulded into shape for the purposes of 
 literature, when the translation of the Bible was commenced 
 by the missionaries. In many of them they were compelled 
 first of all to compile the most elementary auxiliaries, gram- 
 mars and dictionaries. It cannot therefore be marvelled at if 
 many of the earliest translations soon proved unsatisfactory, 
 and had to be replaced partly by a succession of revised versions, 
 partly by wholly new ones. We can divide the great record 
 into two divisions, the period of translations by individual lin- 
 
 ' Bibliography ; MissionswissenschaftUche Studien, Warneck {Festschrift), pp. 
 187-213. This is a capital monograph. Older and less trustworthy are the Allgem. 
 Miss. Zeitschrift, 1891, pp. 452 et scq., and 1889, pp. 59-65. Then there are the 
 valuable tables in Dennis' Centennial Survey, p. 133, etc. 
 
2 88 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 guists — say down to 1850 — and the period of Revision Com- 
 mittees (since 1850). We shall limit ourselves in what follows 
 to the greater Indian languages ; that which has been accom- 
 plished in the less important tongues and numberless dialects 
 can be better treated when we come to speak in detail of the 
 mission fields directly concerned. 
 
 The first Indian language into which the Bible was translated 
 was Tamil. After several premature attempts by the Dutch in 
 Ceylon, and after the preparatory labours of Ziegenbalg, that 
 gifted and industrious missionary, Fabricius, produced after 
 twenty years (1753-1772) of toil that classical translation which 
 the Tamils have since called " The Golden." To this day it is 
 used by the Leipzig Missionary Society, and modern revisions 
 (the last was made in the eighties) have chiefly been directed 
 towards a restoration of the actual old text of Fabricius. From 
 the very beginning, however, English and American missions 
 have not made use of Fabricius' version. A revised version by 
 Rhenius having proved both shallow, monotonous and arbitrary, 
 and a translation by Percival of the Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel having been spoiled by too large an element of 
 Sanskrit, a wholly new translation was undertaken by Bower, 
 also of the S.P.G. His production proving likewise open 
 to much criticism, a Committee of Revisers, composed of dis- 
 tinguished linguists, worked once more through the whole Bible 
 during the years 1 857-1 869. The result was the so-called 
 Madras Version, which is admitted to be extraordinarily successful 
 by all those competent to judge — which is, in fact, regarded as a 
 model translation, and is used by all the English and American 
 missionary societies. 
 
 The new missionary era started in Bengal, and it was only 
 natural that the work of Bible translation should first be 
 seriously grappled with in Bengali. The Bengali language is 
 also very important, because the Bengalis are one of the most 
 intelligent races of India, and are in many respects leaders of 
 thought to the rest of the country. The only materials Carey 
 found at his disposal were manuscript fragments of translations 
 made by a devout indigo planter, Ellerton, and an Anglican 
 chaplain, Thomas. He therefore made a completely new and 
 original translation. The New Testament appeared as early as 
 1801, and the Old Testament in 1809. With tireless industry he 
 toiled at the correction and improvement of this his favourite 
 task right up to his death ; the revision of the proofs of the 
 eighth edition of the New Testament was his last occupation on 
 earth. In spite of all this labour, however, Carey's translation 
 has been superseded. After Haberlin and Sandys, both of the 
 Church Missionary Society, had endeavoured to again bring 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 289 
 
 into public notice Ellerton's work, the two Baptist linguists, Drs. 
 Yates and VVenger, undertook a fresh translation (i 833-1 845) 
 into Bengali, based upon the version of Carey. It is their trans- 
 lation which has been taken as a starting-point for the labours 
 of the great Revision Committee which since 1875, under the 
 presidency of Dr. Wenger and of his learned colleague and 
 successor, Dr. Rouse (also a Baptist), has been seeking to produce 
 a version reliable and satisfactory from every point of view. 
 
 During the first half of the last century too high an estimate 
 was placed on the value of a translation of the Bible into the 
 sacred language, Sanskrit. This was no doubt a consequence 
 of the brilliant discoveries that were then being made in Indo- 
 Germanic philology and of the enthusiasm then awakened for 
 the newly unveiled world of Indian antiquity. It was hoped 
 that such translations would prove a means of access to the 
 Brahmans, who still remained the leaders of the intellectual life 
 of India. Particular mention should be made of Dr. Carey in 
 this connection ; he spoke Sanskrit fluently and was one of the 
 first authorities of his time upon it. He translated the whole of 
 the Bible into this very difficult language (1808-18 18), and his 
 successors, Drs. Yates and Wenger, have spared no pains in their 
 attempts to improve and perfect his translation. 
 
 Of more importance were the two widely spoken and closely 
 related languages of Hindustan, Hindi and Urdu. The old 
 Danish missionary, Benjamin Schultze, had made many transla- 
 tions into Urdu, and the Men of Serampore had also occupied 
 themselves with it. The first complete translation into Urdu 
 was made by the saintly Henry Martyn ; it was printed in 
 181 5. Martyn's translation was afterwards thoroughly revised 
 by Dr. R. C. Mathers, a gifted missionary of the London Mis- 
 sionary Society stationed at Mirzapur, near Benares.^ On the 
 other hand, Revs. Dr. Yates of Calcutta (B.M.S.) and C. J. 
 Hoernle of Meerut (C.M.S.) made independent and wholly new 
 translations which were distinguished, the first for the wonderful 
 linguistic lore it gave proof of, the second for its exceeding 
 truthfulness to the original. There were thus quite a number 
 of preparatory studies, and there arose a pressing need for one 
 great final translation. This difficult and important task was 
 undertaken (from 1892- 1903) by a committee of revisers 
 composed of the best Urdu scholars, both missionaries and 
 others. It met under the chairmanship of Dr. Weitbrecht 
 (C.M.S.), and accomplished its design in one hundred and 
 twenty sittings. All the societies concerned have signified their 
 
 1 Hence the first edition (1842) is termed the Benares Version, and the second 
 (1872), which does not differ fiom the foregoing in any essential features, the Mirzapur 
 Version. 
 
 19 
 
290 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 readiness to lay aside their own particular translations in favour 
 of this one, which has been executed by the joint labours of 
 representatives from each of them. 
 
 There was almost as great an abundance of translations into 
 Hindi. The first was the work of Carey, the ever-indefatigable 
 (1809-18 1 8), whilst the second had been made by Bowley, a 
 missionary of the Church Missionary Society, who based his 
 work somewhat on Henry Martyn's Urdu translation. The New 
 Testament in this translation (i 845-1850) was so thoroughly re- 
 vised by Parsons and Holcomb (both of the Church Missionary 
 Society), and the Old (1868) by Dr. Joseph Owen, that they 
 may be almost regarded as new versions. Yet none of these 
 attempts satisfied the demand for a good translation of the 
 Bible. A Revision Committee has therefore taken this 
 matter in hand also, since 1884; its labours were brought to 
 a successful issue mainly owing to the industry and zeal of Drs. 
 Hooper (Church Missionary Society) and Kellogg (American 
 Presbyterian). The result has been once more the production 
 of a practically new translation, which has met with great 
 acceptance at the hands of all Hindi scholars. 
 
 In Assamese the most important translation, after one by 
 Carey (18 15-1832) which soon became obsolete, is that of the 
 two American Baptists, Revs. Dr. Brown and Gurney. The 
 former was responsible for the New and the latter for the Old 
 Testament. They worked with great industry, and the first 
 edition of the complete Bible appeared in 1888. A very much 
 improved edition edited by Gurney was published in 1903. 
 The ground was prepared in Oriya, the language of Orissa and 
 the adjacent districts, also by Carey through his translation of 
 181 1-1817 ; this was thoroughly revised (1838-1844) by Messrs. 
 Sutton and Noyes, missionaries of the General and the Free 
 Will Baptists respectively. It was again thoroughly revised by 
 the eminent linguist. Dr. Buckley, about 1870. In the early 
 nineties a Committee of Revision was formed, Dr. Buckley 
 presiding, and the whole matter taken in hand, but the 
 Committee has not yet concluded its task. 
 
 In Punjabi, following on imperfect and early obsolescent 
 translations by Carey, Dr. Newton, the American pioneer 
 missionary, has been responsible for the most effective work. 
 He was permitted to labour for fifty-six years (dating from 
 1835), and he received help from a number of missionaries 
 belonging to the Church Missionary Society. Towards the 
 close of the eighties a Revision Committee was appointed, 
 Dr. Newton being in the chair, and a thoroughly revised 
 edition of the New Testament has recently been issued (1906) 
 by them. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 291 
 
 As Carey's translation of the New Testament into Kashmiri 
 proved unserviceable, two missionaries, Messrs. Wade and 
 Knowles, have made an entirely fresh translation of the New 
 (1883) and the Old (1899) Testaments. In Sindhi the New 
 Testament only is obtainable ; it was translated by three 
 members of the Church Missionary Society — Messrs. Burn, 
 Isenberg, and Shirt — in 1878, and thoroughly revised in 1896. 
 Carey's translation of the New Testament (1820) into Gujarati 
 was also soon superseded ; Messrs. Skinner and Fyvie of the 
 London Missionary Society undertook a new translation of the 
 whole Bible (18 15-1823). After this had been first revised in 
 1862 by the Irish Presbyterians, who took over the work begun 
 by the London Missionary Society in the region in question, it 
 was again radically revised by a Committee of Revision (1890- 
 1903) composed of the best scholars in the language, presided 
 over by the missionary Shillidys. 
 
 A great deal of work and perseverance has been expended on 
 the translation of the Bible into Marathi. Carey, it is true, had 
 been Professor of Marathi at Fort William College, but his trans- 
 lation of the Bible into this language (181 1-1820) soon proved 
 ill adapted for practical purposes. In 1826 the missionaries of 
 the American Board published a new translation, and in 1848 
 the missionaries of the Church Missionary Society. Following 
 up a cursory revision of the various attempts which had been 
 made from as early as 1857, a Revision Committee assembled 
 at Bombay in 1894 under the direction of the learned Ur. 
 Mackichan, of the Free Church of Scotland. Since that date 
 this Committee has been actively engaged, in almost daily 
 sessions, in the attempt to produce as perfect a Marathi Bible 
 as possible. 
 
 Especially difficult was the work in Singhalese, the language 
 of the Aryan immigrants in Ceylon. The language of the lower 
 classes, of polite society, and of literature are so widely diverse 
 that one is almost led to despair of any translation ever being 
 made which shall be comprehensible to all classes and withal 
 faithful to the original. Efforts in this direction have not been 
 lacking. A translation initiated by the Dutch (i 739-1 776) and 
 revised by Fereira in 1783 is wholly obsolete. In the years 
 1817-1823 a translation of the whole Bible was undertaken by 
 Tolfrey, a civil servant, and by Messrs. Clough, Armour, and 
 Chater, missionaries of the Wesleyan Church and Baptist 
 Missionary Societies respectively. About the same time the 
 Anglican missionaries in those parts published another under 
 their own sole supervision. In 1846 a Revision Committee was 
 formed under the scholarly linguist Gogerly ; in the main it 
 adopted the older versions for the Old Testament, but produced 
 
292 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS i 
 
 a fresh and decidedly improved translation of the New Testa- I 
 ment, known as the "Gogerly" or "Interim" translation. In I 
 1886 another Translation Committee was formed under the ! 
 presidency of Rev. S, Coles (Church Missionary Society), and j 
 missionaries and native preachers representing all the societies j 
 at work on the island belong to it. Their labour, however, in 
 spite of all the perseverance and zeal they have put into it, is 
 not yet concluded, and it is very doubtful whether the result 
 will be satisfactory to all parties. 
 
 In the Malayalam districts, on the narrow west-coast region 
 of India, it is very unfortunate that the northern dialect, in | 
 which the Basle missionaries carry on their work, differs widely ^ 
 from the southern dialect, which is used by the Anglican | 
 missionaries and into the ecclesiastical phraseology of which , 
 a considerable number of Syrian expressions and idioms have 
 entered. The whole Bible was translated (i 820-1 842) into the 
 southern dialect by Benjamin Bailey (Church Missionary Society) 
 and into the northern (1844- 1868) by Gundert of the Basle 
 Society. In spite of the great difficulties of the case, an attempt 
 was made as early as 187 1 by a committee composed of repre- 
 sentatives from both districts to create one single Malayalam Bible. 
 Many fine scholars have worked at it : pre-eminently amongst 
 the Englishmen we ought to mention Messrs. Baker, Maddox, 
 and Richards ; belonging to the Basle Missionary Society, Herrn 
 Fritz, Knobloch, and Frohnmeyer; and amongst the Indian 
 Christians, Dr. Koshi Koshi, Messrs. Chandran, Rasulam, and 
 many others. The highest praise is due, however, to the dis- [ 
 tinguished and brilliant Basle missionary, Wm. Dilger. The I 
 work, by reason of many differences and disappointments, has j 
 made but slow progress. Their version of the New Testament j 
 was, however, completed in 1899. \ 
 
 In Kanarese also, the language spoken in the western ; 
 highlands of the Deccan, there existed two translations, one | 
 by Messrs. Hands and Reeve, of the London Missionary Society, ; 
 and the other by two gifted Basle missionaries, Mogling and ; 
 Weigle. At the suggestion of the British and Foreign Bible j 
 Society, supporters of both translations assembled in a united I 
 Revision Committee (1850-1860) which issued an improved i 
 version of the whole Bible. As even this, however, did not give j 
 complete satisfaction, a new Revision Committee was formed 
 in the nineties with representatives of all the societies at work 
 in Kanara, under the presidency of the Rev. Henry Haigh, a 
 very able Wesleyan missionary, though one, it must be admitted, 
 of most advanced philological views. This Committee has i 
 completed its revision of the New Testament and is now at , 
 work upon the Old Testament. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 293 
 
 More difficult and more complicated was the labour involved 
 in translating the Telugu Bible. In connection with the 
 earliest translations into this language, very good work has 
 been done by the representatives of the London Missionary 
 Society in Vizagapatam, especially by Messrs. Desgranges, 
 Pritchett, and Gordon, who produced two practically complete 
 translations (18 10-1857). Both, however, stood very much in 
 need of revision, and a long line of experienced missionary 
 linguists have rendered this service. Special mention should 
 here be made of Drs. Hay (L.M.S.) and Chamberlain (American 
 Reformed Church), and Messrs. Lewis (American Baptist), 
 H. Schmidt (General Council), Bacon (L.M.S.), Cain and Alex- 
 ander (C.M.S.), and others. Again and again did revision com- 
 mittees assemble without bringing the matter to a successful issue. 
 On the one hand, the dialects spoken in the various districts of 
 this mission field differ very widely ; on the other, there are many 
 private interests which come to the fore, especially in Baptist 
 missions, which are here in the majority. In spite of all the 
 earnest toil expended during the past forty years, a universally 
 accepted and entirely satisfactory Telugu Bible is even to-day 
 unfortunately nothing but a pious hope. 
 
 An enormous amount of industry, learning, and culture has 
 been spent upon these various translations of the Bible, which 
 are here sketched in the barest outline. Particularly during the 
 last twenty years have missionaries devoted themselves to the 
 strenuous work of revision in every part of India. It is to be 
 hoped that their work will be brought to a happy issue in all 
 the greater tongues of India during the present decade. In 
 connection with this fundamental work, and almost as much 
 with regard to the earliest translations as to the later revisions, 
 inestimable services have been rendered by the British and 
 Foreign Bible Society. Thanks to its satisfactory financial 
 position, it has been enabled either itself to print or has 
 rendered great assistance in the printing of almost all the 
 translations we have named, as well as of those which are 
 still incomplete. And because of its independent situation, 
 in that it lies outside of all the particular interests of the 
 societies at work in the various language zones, it has been 
 specially fitted to become the representative of their common 
 interest in the distribution of the Word of Life to every people 
 and tribe in as perfect a form as possible, and to invite the most 
 distinguished linguists in each district to united labour. It 
 borrowed these men, in some cases for years, from their 
 respective missionary societies, paid the cost of their mainten- 
 ance, and assembled them in places where they would enjoy 
 sufficient leisure to be able to undertake the intense mental 
 
294 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 strain involved by such arduous tasks. Nine Indian auxiliary 
 Bible Societies assist it in this work, most of which can look 
 back on long periods of useful activity. Going from north to 
 south, the auxiliary Bible Societies are as follows : that of 
 Calcutta (founded in 1811), of Allahabad (the North India 
 Bible Society, founded 1845), of Lahore (for the Punjab, 
 founded 1863), of Bombay (18 17), Madras (181 2), Bangalore 
 (1825), Jaffna (1839), Colombo (1812), and Kandy (1878), to 
 which must be added the Burmese Bible and Tract Society 
 (1861). At the headquarters of most of these societies we 
 find an imposing Bible House with extensive warehouses filled 
 with Bibles and Bible portions in all the tongues spoken in the 
 district. The returns from these Bible repositories are con- 
 siderable. In one year (1899) the Bible Society of Madras 
 disposed of 10,826 Bibles, 8394 New Testaments, and 163,365 
 Bible portions ; in the same year the North India Bible 
 Society at Allahabad sent out 3841 Bibles, 7509 New Testa- 
 ments, and 83,403 portions. Let us allow one of the secretaries. 
 Dr. Weitbrecht of Lahore, to give us a peep at the extent of 
 his work. He writes in the Intelligence)' (1902, p. 595): — 
 
 " The Lahore Bible and Religious Book Depository, with 
 its branch at Simla, has been the centre of an ever-growing 
 work which extends far beyond the limits of the Province. 
 Wherever Urdu is read or spoken, there our publications go — 
 to the North-West Provinces, of course, but also beyond them 
 to Calcutta and Bombay, to Madras and Hyderabad, and in 
 fact wherever work among Muhammadan readers is being 
 carried on throughout India. Furthermore, wherever Indian 
 soldiers and sailors go, where Indian labourers emigrate, our 
 Scriptures, tracts, and books follow them— to Australia and 
 Aden, to Hongkong and Mombasa, to Demerara and Liverpool. 
 The circulation of the Punjab Bible Society for 1900 amounted 
 to 2339 Bibles, 5618 Testaments, and 46,636 portions in twenty- 
 two languages." 
 
 (b) Other Literature 
 
 In the year 1893 Rev. Dr. Waltroth attempted to draw up 
 a complete list of all the more important books and publica- 
 tions which had been produced by missionaries and native 
 Christians either in or about the languages of India.^ This was 
 at that time a tiresome but meritorious piece of work. To-day, 
 only twelve years later, a similar undertaking would be both 
 impossible and .superfluous ; the mere titles of the books which 
 have been written by the representatives of Protestant missions 
 
 ^ Allgemeine Miss. Zeitschrift, vol. xx. p. 129 ct seq. p. 222 et seq. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 295 
 
 in the languages of India would fill a thick volume. Lists such 
 as the above exist in English, Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, 
 Malayalam, Tulu, Badaga, Toda, Koi, Bengali, Oriya, Assam- 
 ese, Mikir, Ao Naga, Angami Naga, Tangkhul Naga, Garo, 
 Manipuri, Khasia, Gond, Santali, Mundari and Oraon, Malto, 
 Nepali, Lepcha, Marathi, and Urdu. Further catalogues of 
 this kind are in course of preparation in Hindi, Gujarati, and 
 other languages.^ In the Descriptive Catalogue of Urdu 
 Christian Literature, with a revietv of the same and a 
 supplementary catalogue of the Christian publicatio7is ifi the 
 other languages of the P^injab (Lahore, first edition, 1886; 
 second edition, 1901), the title index of Christian publications 
 in Urdu alone occupies fifty-eight pages. We ought, however, 
 to state that of all the Indian languages Urdu possesses the 
 largest Christian literature. 
 
 Besides the branch associations of the British and Foreign 
 Bible Society, there are two great organisations in particular 
 which have devoted themselves to the creation and dissemina- 
 tion of Christian literature. First and foremost is the Religious 
 Tract Society of London, which has thrown out a network 
 of branches all over India which we shall again proceed 
 to enumerate in geographical order, passing from north to 
 south: The Calcutta Tract and Book Society (1823, yearly 
 turnover 1,091,233 volumes), the North Indian Tract and 
 Book Society at Allahabad (1848, turnover 475,000 volumes), 
 the Religious Book Society in the Punjab (founded, Lahore, 
 1863, turnover 295,845 volumes), the Bombay Tract and Book 
 Society (1827, about 400,000 volumes), the Religious Tract and 
 Book Society of Madras (181 8, 1,991,285 volumes), the Ban- 
 galore Tract and Book Society (1855, 97,182 volumes), the 
 Gujarat Tract Society (Surat, 1854, 63,750 volumes), the Orissa 
 Tract Society (Cuttack, 1873, 44,000 volumes), the Malayalam 
 Religious Tract Society (Trichur, 1895, 88,908 volumes), the 
 South Travancore Tract Society (Nagercoil, 1853, 360,100 
 volumes), the Jaffna Tract Society (1800), and the Christian 
 Literature and Religious Tract Society of Colombo (i860, 
 364,400 volumes). According to the detailed statistics given in 
 the Report of the Madras Decennial Missionary Conference, 
 these auxiliary societies of the London Religious Tract 
 Society, in conjunction with a few kindred societies and 
 associations, printed in all during the years 1891-1900 some 
 fifty-three and a half million volumes, disposing during the 
 same time of nearly sixty-two million volumes, for which close 
 on two millions of rupees were paid. 
 
 ^ They can all be obtained from the Christian Literature Society, Madras 
 Royapetta. 
 
296 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 A second great organisation of more recent origin than 
 the foregoing is the group of Christian Literature Societies. 
 Under the powerful impulse of the Mutiny of 1857, Christian 
 circles in England determined, under the leadership of Lord 
 Shaftesbury, to take a noble "Christian revenge" on India by 
 founding a great society for the promotion of education on 
 Christian lines, particularly by means of elementary schools, the 
 training of native teachers, and the dissemination of wholesome 
 Christian literature. The Association sprang into life at Madras 
 and Bombay in 1858 under the title of the " Vernacular Educa- 
 tion Society." During the first decades of its existence it laid 
 principal stress on the fostering of the elementary school, which 
 it imagined could be developed on a purely Indian basis and 
 in connection with the old Indian " patashalas." Large groups 
 of village schools were therefore created in the low-lying plains 
 of Bengal, in the neighbourhood of Amritsar in the Punjab, and 
 in the Madura province of South India. As aids to this work, 
 normal colleges were opened in Amritsar, Ahmadnagar, and 
 Dindigul. Gradually, however, the Association turned its 
 attention more and more exclusively to literary work. Only 
 the Ahmadnagar Seminary was kept up, and it still serves 
 the American Board as a training institute for its native 
 teachers. In accordance with this change of front, the Associa- 
 tion adopted the name of " Christian Literature Society." As 
 such it has founded a network of branch societies, as, e.g., in 
 1858 the Christian Literature Society of Bombay, in 1881 that 
 of Ludhiana in the Punjab, in 1899 that of Mysore, and 
 formerly two for the United Provinces and Bengal. By far the 
 largest of these intimately connected associations is that of 
 Madras, which we may regard as the parent society. It has an 
 annual turnover of 731,149 books and tracts, more than three 
 times as many as all the other branch societies put together. 
 Down to the year 1900 the Society as a whole had printed 
 2380 books in eighteen different languages, with a total of 
 26,000,000 copies issued. Upwards of 100,000 native children 
 have received elementary education on Christian lines in its 
 schools, and 1200 Christian teachers have been trained in its 
 normal colleges. The principal credit for this very successful 
 undertaking is due to Dr. John Murdoch, the Secretary of the 
 Society from its inception down to his death (August lOth, 1904). 
 After Alexander Duff, no other man has done so much for the 
 diffusion of Christian thought in India as this plain, modest, 
 indefatigable, plodding Scotsman. Born in Glasgow on 
 July 22nd, 1 8 19, he went out to Kandy in 1844 as headmaster 
 of a Government school. Here he soon interested himself in 
 the production of Christian literature, and it was thanks to his 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 297 
 
 instigation and enthusiasm that a Religious Tract Society was 
 founded in Ceylon in 1847 and that the young Society took 
 over the printing establishment previously belonging to the 
 Baptists. In 1855 he entered the service of the United 
 Presbyterians of Scotland in order to devote himself entirely 
 to literary work; and in 1858 he gladly accepted a call to 
 Madras, which placed him at the head of the Christian 
 Vernacular Education Society. At its disposal he placed his 
 entire strength and his many gifts for four and a half decades. 
 Generally speaking, he directed all his efforts towards the pro- 
 duction in English and in the more important Indian tongues 
 of school books recognised by the Government, and towards 
 intellectual provision for educated young people who have learnt 
 English and thereby find themselves in a maze of antagonistic 
 ideas and tendencies, out of which it is difficult for them to find 
 their way. On their behalf he wrote pamphlets and tracts on 
 all burning questions of the day and on all phases of the ever- 
 varying religious life of India. These writings in many cases 
 exercised a highly enlightening and quickening influence. More 
 and more did the plainly furnished study of the little man with 
 the shrivelled-up face become the centre of Christian literary 
 work for the whole of India. 
 
 Besides these two great interdenominational organisations, 
 almost every individual denomination makes less comprehensive 
 attempts to produce literature for its own peculiar necessities 
 and to expound its own peculiar views. Many societies — as, for 
 instance, the Leipzig Tamil Mission — hold almost entirely aloof 
 from the general literary movement because they are fortunate 
 enough to possess an extensive and truly excellent literature 
 of their own. Church of England missions owe much to 
 the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, which of 
 course has a strong leaning towards High Church principles 
 and has had the Common Prayer Book and other specifically 
 Anglican and devotional books translated into the languages of 
 India and printed. Moreover, the American Baptists, with their 
 flourishing Telugu Mission, have founded a Telugu Baptist 
 Publication Society under the direction of the gifted missionary 
 linguist John McLaurin. 
 
 During the first thirty years of last century, so fresh and far- 
 reaching was the influence of the Men of Serampore, literary 
 work was a main item in the programme of every mission, and 
 every large and well-equipped station possessed its own printing- 
 press. At that time, when there were so few printing establish- 
 ments in India and when communication with England and 
 America was so difficult, it was more necessary than it is to-day 
 that each society should itself publish the works written by its 
 
298 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 agents. Nowadays there are many printing- houses in India. It 
 is a comparatively easy matter to pubHsh Indian books in the 
 homeland, and the great literary auxiliary societies are also 
 disposed to bring out any literature serviceable to the cause of 
 missions. This being the case, one might think that the 
 missionary societies would either throw overboard altogether 
 or considerably lessen the unwieldy ballast of fully equipped 
 printing houses, together with all their apparatus for bookbind- 
 ing and so on. But such has by no means been the case ; on 
 the contrary, printing houses are to be numbered among those 
 institutions which are rapidly being multiplied in the mission 
 field, and for two reasons : in the first place, missionaries 
 frequently require to print books in languages and dialects 
 which as yet possess no literature of their own and which are 
 wholly unknown outside a limited area. In such languages 
 type-setting would be extremely difficult were it not undertaken 
 by men speaking the language in question as their mother 
 tongue, and proof-correcting would be laborious unless done 
 by the missionary on the spot. This is the case with Munda, 
 Oraon, Santali, Garo, the Naga dialects, Khassi, and many other 
 languages and dialects. Secondly, it is an urgent necessity, 
 owing to the exclusiveness of the caste system, for the various 
 missions to find work for native Christians which, without 
 making too great demands upon their strength, shall at the 
 same time be congenial to them. And it is just such work as 
 this of type-setting, printing, binding, etc., which affords welcome 
 employment for those Christians who have been expelled from 
 their former trades. At the present time there are forty-five 
 mission printing-presses in India besides two in Burma and 
 three in Ceylon.^ Many of these are only small affairs which 
 would only be maintained for a time in any case. But many 
 are truly great undertakings. For example, in the year 1900 we 
 find that there were then published by : — 
 
 The Printing House of the — 
 
 American Presbyterians, Allahabad 
 Methodist Episcopalians, Calcutta 
 
 ^ Many of the missionary societies kept up large printing establishments in former 
 times but have withdrawn from that particular kind of work in more recent days. 
 We have already mentioned the magnificent publishing department and printing 
 house of the Serampore Trio. Extensive printing operations were also carried on 
 for over forty years by the American Board at Bombay (1814-1868), at Manepy in 
 the Jaffna district in North Ceylon (1834-1855), and at Madras (1834-1864), the first 
 principally in Marathi, the two latter in Tamil. All three were at the same time 
 large publishing houses and have rendered valuable service, particularly in the issue 
 of Bibles. Since the important visitation of all the missions of the American Board 
 by its Secretary, Dr. Rufus Anderson, these printing establishments have been given 
 up. The large Madras business was sold to the Society for Promoting Christian 
 Knowledge. 
 
 Vols. 
 
 Pages. 
 
 421,155 
 
 94,052,658 
 
 140,586 
 
 50.603,576 
 
Vols. 
 
 Pages. 
 
 ? 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 . 282,918 
 
 nearly 36,000,000 
 
 . 342,041 
 
 15,750,000 
 
 ? 
 
 890,910 
 
 . 421,200 
 
 831,200 
 
 • 466,475 
 
 3,368,396 
 
 MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 299 
 
 The Printing House of the — 
 
 Methodist Episcopalians, Lucknow 
 
 ,, ,, Madras 
 
 Basle Missionary Society, Mangalore . 
 American Board at Pasumalai (Madura) 
 
 ,, ,, Satara (Bombay) 
 
 London ^Missionary Society at Nagercoil 
 
 The only i^reat German missionary printing house is that 
 of the Basle Missionary Society at Mangalore. The Church 
 which lays the greatest stress on press activity is the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church of America, whose three printing establish- 
 ments are equipped with real magnificence and are conducted 
 on truly model lines. Almost everywhere printing has to 
 be carried on in several languages owing to the linguistic 
 diversity of India. At the Calcutta printing house of the 
 Baptist Missionary Society work is done in fifteen different 
 languages, at the Madras branch of the Society for Promoting 
 Christian Knowledge also in fifteen, at that of the Basle 
 Missionary Society at Mangalore in eight. Many of these 
 printing establishments can look back over a long period of 
 usefulness : those of the American Baptists at Rangoon and the 
 Wesleyan Methodists at Colombo were founded in 18 16, that of 
 the Baptist Missionary Society at Calcutta in 181 8, that of 
 the Church Missionary Society at Cottayam in 1821, that of the 
 London Missionary Society at Nagercoil in 1832, that of the 
 English General Baptists at Cuttack in 1838, that of the Basle 
 Society at Mangalore in 1841, and that of the Irish Presby- 
 terians at Surat was taken over from the London Missionary 
 Society and had been started as early as 1 816. A glance at 
 the map will show that these older printing houses were 
 distributed at fairly regular intervals over the more important 
 missionary spheres that were then occupied. 
 
 This abundance of missionary printing houses not only 
 permits of India's need for Bibles and Bible portions being 
 almost entirely supplied in India itself, it also provides an 
 opportunity for extensively developing a periodical press. 
 Misled by the literary celebrity of this country of ancient 
 culture and civilisation, a false impression has perhaps been 
 received concerning the literacy of India. According to recent 
 investigations, only 5*3 per cent, of the total population {i.e. 10 
 per cent, of the male population and only 07 per cent, of the 
 female) can read and write. The figures are something under 15 
 millions out of 294/^ millions. On the one hand, the literate 
 classes monopolise the intellectual leadership and domination 
 of the country to almost the same extent and with well-nigh the 
 same exclusiveness as the literati of China. But, on the other 
 hand, the number of readers is rapidly increasing. Nearly four 
 
300 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and a half million boys and girls now attend school in India, 
 Further, it is a well-known fact that for the introduction of a 
 new world of thought, for the effective presentation of a great 
 system of intellectual development, periodicals are better 
 adapted than single works, however brilliantly written the latter 
 may be. Missions have therefore been compelled, on the 
 principle of gutta cavat lapidem, to lay stress upon the 
 exposition of the Christian conception of life, by means of 
 regularly issued publications, for those Hindus and Muham- 
 madans who can read. Moreover, there is a universal demand 
 for periodicals in connection with the pastoral work of the 
 several missions, the intellectual and spiritual training of native 
 teachers, the supervision of the widely extended system of 
 Christian associations, and many other forms of organisation. 
 We have seen how the Men of Serampore made a start in this 
 direction and how Duff followed in their steps. This periodical 
 literature, like most of the departments which concern the 
 surface work of missions and which are regarded purely as a 
 means to an end, has been subject to many changes. Down to 
 about the year 1850, missionaries controlled almost entirely the 
 public press of India and made so strong an impression upon it 
 that political papers in the ordinary sense of the word did not 
 exist and the centre of public interest was focussed on the 
 discussion of religious questions. Since that time so many 
 influential journals and magazines have been brought into 
 existence by Englishmen and natives alike that missionaries 
 no longer maintain their position of leadership in this respect. 
 Still, 147 of the 470 periodicals of India are even to-day 
 missionary enterprises. We do not include in that number 
 several magazines which are published principally for mission- 
 ary circles ; such are Medical Missions in India (Ajmer, since 
 1895), the Indian Evangelical Review (1873-1902), and the 
 South Indian Harvest Field (issued by the Wesleyans in 
 Mysore, since 1889). The rest may be divided into two 
 great groups : those which are chiefly intended for heathen 
 readers and which are designed to be the vehicles of the 
 evangelical message and to leaven the heathen thought-world 
 with Christian ideas ; and those which are mainly destined for 
 service within the Christian Church and its manifold cor- 
 porate life. Probably a quarter of all the papers that are 
 published appear either in English or partly in English 
 and partly in vernacular — a striking proof of the import- 
 ance of that f per cent, of the population who understand 
 English. By far the larger number of papers have only a 
 relatively small number of readers ; as far as it is possible to 
 find out, there were in 1900 only twenty-seven of the 147 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 301 
 
 Christian journals with an edition of a thousand copies or over. 
 At the head of the list stands the quarterly organ of the 
 Sunday schools of India, Sunday School Lessons and Helps, 
 published at Lucknow with a circulation of 7700 copies. 
 Thereafter we find the four best-known and most influential 
 journals : the Epiphany, issued by the Oxford Brotherhood 
 in Calcutta (circulation 3000), the BalshikaJiaks of the 
 Bombay Tract Society (circulation 3000), Sattia Tudan 
 (" Messenger of Truth," issued by the Danish Mission at 
 Madras, with a circulation of 3844 copies), and the much-spoken 
 of (both in England and in India) Christian-Kanarese newspaper, 
 Vrittanta Patrika or " Newsletter," published by the Wesleyan 
 missionaries at Mysore and founded by that brilliant mission- 
 ary Rev. Henry Haigh. The circulation is 4400. Very 
 influential, too, in South India are the Christian Patriot 
 (Madras), the organ of those South Indian Christians who are 
 striving after independence ; the Sattiavarthaviani, the maga- 
 zine of the American Madura Mission ; and the Mangalava- 
 sanani of the American Reformed Arcot Mission. Of the 
 papers published by German societies the most important is 
 the Satyadipike of the Basle Mission, which appears six times 
 a year at Mangalore and enjoys a circulation of 11 50 copies. 
 No less than forty-two of the missionary periodicals are issued 
 in Calcutta — another evidence of the extent to which the 
 education of the Bengalis, and particularly of the population 
 round about Calcutta, surpasses that of the remaining inhabit- 
 ants of India. Twenty-one more are published in Madras and 
 thirteen in Bombay. 
 
 Here we should like to point out two particular directions in 
 which evangelical missions have done special service. Barely a 
 score of the hundred and forty-seven languages of India and 
 Burma — ninety-two of which belong to the intricate Indo- 
 Chinese group of languages and are almost exclusively spoken 
 in Assam and Burma — had attained to the dignity of written 
 languages when, at the beginning of last century, Protestant 
 missions first took the field.^ Even these languages had no 
 prose literature and only a few of them a poetic literature, and 
 nearly all, save perhaps Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi, were in a 
 condition of the greatest literary destitution. For one ignorant 
 of the languages of India and of their very involved history it is 
 quite impossible to gain any adequate idea of the services 
 rendered by missionaries in the renaissance of individual Indian 
 tongues ; we would only call to mind Carey and his work for 
 
 * The principal ones were Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi, Assamese, Urdu, Punjabi, 
 Gujarati, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, Malayalam, to which we may add 
 Singhalese and Burmese. 
 
302 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Bengali, the creation of a modern literature in Hindi, and 
 kindred performances. And to this we must add the number 
 of languages and dialects which the missionaries for the first 
 time raised to the dignity of written languages. It is an 
 acknowledged fact that work in this direction has not always 
 been guided by the best judgment. Especially was this the 
 case with the Serampore Trio, whose burning desire to give the 
 Word of God to all the Indian peoples in their own tongue led 
 them to experiment with a number of languages which riper 
 philological knowledge has rejected as dialects of secondary 
 importance ; such were Baghelkhandi, Bhatniri, Bikaniri, Haraoti, 
 Kumaoni, Marwari, Jaipuri, Kanauji, Causali, Falpa, Dogri, 
 Cutchi, Udaipuri, and Ujjaini. But, on the other hand, numerous 
 languages were first opened up by missionaries, notably Sindhi 
 among the Aryan languages. In 1849 the American Mission 
 press at Bombay printed for the Government a Sindhi-English 
 dictionary and a grammar. Commencing in 1854, Dr. Ernst 
 Trumpp, of the Church Missionary Society and later Professor 
 of Oriental Languages at Munich {d. 1885), made a scientific 
 study of the Sindhi tongue and published at Government 
 expense a dictionary, grammar, anthology, and a book of 
 stories, all works of real value. Pashto also, the language of 
 the neighbouring Afghans, has been raised to the status of a 
 written language by missionaries. Among the Dravidian 
 languages Malayalam owes its renaissance as a modern written 
 language principally to missionaries of the Basle Society and 
 the Church Missionary Society. Hermann Gundert, a brilliant 
 philologist of the Basle Missionary Society, deserves special 
 mention in this connection. His Malayalam-English dictionary, 
 his grammar, anthology, and other minor works, underlie all our 
 knowledge of that language. Other Basle missionaries have 
 welded the Tulu, spoken in South Kanara, and the Badaga, spoken 
 in the Blue Mountains, into literary shape, and rendered notable 
 service in the Toda and Kota dialects. Of particular import- 
 ance in the scientific opening up of the Tamil language were 
 the famous Comparative Graimnar of the Dravidian or S. 
 Indian Family of Languages {y'^^G \ 2nd edition, 1875), by the 
 Anglican bishop, Caldwell, and the Bibliotheca tamulica, by 
 Dr. Graul, Director of the Leipzig Missionary Society (18 54-1S65, 
 in 4 vols., the second of which is a Tamil grammar). The minor 
 Dravidian languages of Central India were nearly all first made 
 use of for literary purposes by missionaries : thus Drose of 
 Bhagalpur set to work in 1850 with the Malto of the Paharis in 
 the Rajmahal Mountains ; Ferdinand Hahn cultivated Kurukh, 
 spoken by the Oraons of Chota Nagpur ; Dawson (U.F.C.) the 
 intricate Gond dialects, and Williamson (C.M.S.) the Koi 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 303 
 
 language, etc. The tongues and dialects of the Munda 
 language group have been almost entirely reduced to writing by- 
 missionaries : Munda itself by Dr. Nottrott, Santali by Messrs. 
 Skrefsrud and Borresen, and more recently Kurku (Bihar) by 
 members of the Kurku and Central India Hill Tribes Mission. 
 In similar wise the tongues and dialects of the Indo-Chinese 
 group, of which only Burmese possesses an ancient literature, 
 are gradually being reduced to writing and provided with 
 grammars and dictionaries by the labours of English and 
 American missionaries ; such are Khassi, Garo, the Naga 
 dialects, Karen, Shan, etc. A leading place in this work has 
 been taken by missionaries of the American Baptist Society. 
 Also in the language of the Central Nicobarese the sole book in 
 existence is the translation of the four Gospels made by the 
 Herrnhut Brethren (i 768-1 788). 
 
 Just as the demands of their everyday work have forced the 
 missionaries to adapt one language after another to literary 
 purposes and to prepare the way for their colleagues and 
 successors by the compilation of grammars, readers, and diction- 
 aries, so in exactly similar fashion has a deeper realisation of 
 missionary duty led missionaries and their supporters to a 
 thorough and scientific study of the Indian people, their castes 
 and their religions. For intimate knowledge of Indian life and 
 manners, the sole authority for half a century was the great 
 work by Wm. Ward of Serampore, A View of the Histoiy, 
 Literature, and Mythology of the Hindoos, etc. (2 vols. 2nd 
 edition, 181 8). The two best compilations on caste are 
 Hindu Castes and Tribes as represented in Benares (London, 
 1872), by Rev. M. A. Sherring, M.A., of the London Missionary 
 Society ; and the work of Dr. Wilson of Bombay) Free Church 
 of Scotland), which, after arriving at its second volume, was 
 unfortunately left uncompleted. Scientific presentation of the 
 Hindu religion in comparison with Christianity was for a long 
 time a most distinct want, and it was by no means atoned for 
 by the comprehensive literature of controversial tracts that 
 gradually came into existence. For a long time the best 
 works of reference were James Vaughan's Trident, Crescent, and 
 Cross, a View of the Religious Histoiy of India (London, 1 876 ; 
 Vaughan was a Church Missionary Society's missionary in 
 Calcutta), and the work of Pundit Nehemiah Goreh entitled 
 A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems, 
 which was written in Hindi but translated into English by F. E. 
 Hall (Calcutta, 1862); the title of the Hindi work is Shadharsh- 
 ana Darpana. In this connection the Missionary Conference of 
 Saxony has rendered good service by a prize scheme drawn up 
 in 1898 for "A description of the religious and philosophical 
 
304 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 conceptions of the Hindus . . . and a criticism of the same from 
 the Christian standpoint." Eight competitors submitted essays 
 upon this difficult theme, and the prize was awarded for the 
 briUiant book of Wilhelm Dilger (Basle Missionary Society), 
 Die Eridsung des Menschen nach Hinduis7mis und Christentum 
 (Basle, 1902). Highly commended were the treatises of P. 
 Kreyher, Die Weisheit der Bralimanen und das Ch-istentum 
 (Giitersloh, 1901), and Julius Happel, Die religibsen wid philoso- 
 phischen Gi-undansc/iauu?tgen der Inder {G\Qss&r\, 1901). Another 
 of the theses afterwards published was that of the Rev, T. E. 
 Slater (London Missionary Society), The HigJier Hinduism in 
 Relation to Christianity (London, 1902); this work found many 
 grateful readers in English missionary circles. Thus did the 
 prize scheme of Saxony materially assist one of the most diffi- 
 cult tasks connected with the Indian missionary literature. A 
 thorough study of Zoroastrianism was made by Dr. John Wilson 
 Bombay in his valuable book The Parsi religion . . . un/olded, 
 refuted, and contrasted with Christianity (1840). Concerning 
 Muhammadanism there has existed for a long time a consider- 
 able polemic literature in Urdu, of which Pfander's Mizan at 
 haqq (Roads to the Truth), Miftah al Asrar (Key of the Secrets), 
 and Tariq al hayyat (the Way of Life) are particularly note- 
 worthy, the first especially having been translated into many 
 different languages. To provide missionaries with weapons in 
 their difficult spiritual warfare with Islam, Sir Wm. Muir, the 
 learned and pious ruler of the North- Western Provinces and later 
 Principal of Edinburgh University, wrote a Life of Mahomet 
 in four volumes. In more recent times a number of the Church 
 Missionary Society's agents have distinguished themselves in 
 this connection ; thus Canon Sell, Missionary Secretary of the 
 Society at Madras, wrote The Faith of Islajn (ist edition, 1880; 
 2nd, 1896) and Essays on Islam (1901), the latter being a collec- 
 tion of essays on the history and teaching of Islam. The 
 writings of Rev. St. Clair Tisdall, Church Missionary Society's 
 missionary in Persia, are also much read and widely circulated 
 in India. 
 
 It may be thought, after reading the foregoing account, that 
 the literary side of Indian missionary work is one that is 
 particularly well equipped and effective, and that the coming 
 generation will find very little left for them to do in this 
 department. This would be unfortunately a completely false 
 idea. Perhaps we may be allowed to quote a resume of this 
 subject which was laid ^ before the secretaries of the great 
 English Missionary Societies in 1895 ^y the Rev. E. P. Rice 
 of the London Missionary Society : " Christian literature in 
 
 ^ Lovett, History of the London Missionary Society, vol. ii. p. 291 et seq. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 305 
 
 India is inadequate, both as to quantity and quality. An 
 erroneous idea is prevalent as to the amount and value of 
 the Christian literature already existing in India. Much of 
 the Hterary work done by missionaries consists of grammars, 
 dictionaries, and similar works which, though invaluable aids to 
 the missionary, are no part of vernacular literature. Another 
 portion consists of school books of a purely secular character, 
 which might have been prepared as well by non-Christians as 
 by Christians, and which are indeed being now very largely 
 replaced by Government and Hindu publications. These must 
 all be eliminated. Then again, of the literature now being 
 produced by the Christian pubhshing societies of India, the 
 great bulk is in the English language. This no doubt is of 
 great value, as it reaches many of the most influential classes ; 
 but still it can only touch a minute percentage of the whole 
 population of India ; it leaves untouched the masses of the 
 people who for many a long day yet must be dependent upon 
 the vernacular for instruction. Setting aside all these, the 
 amount and effective value of the vernacular Christian literature, 
 properly so-called, is extremely scanty. It consists largely of 
 tiny tractlets which sell for a farthing or less each. These 
 may be classified as good, bad, and indifferent. In any case 
 they cannot in such small compass deal thoroughly with the 
 questions which they touch. Moreover, of those tracts which 
 are most satisfactorily done, a large proportion are negative 
 and iconoclastic in character, pointing out the imperfection of 
 Hindu doctrine and practice — a comparatively easy task.^ On 
 the side of positive instruction and the exposition and enforce- 
 ment of Christian ideals we are very poorly off. 
 
 " Of the larger works, the majority and the best appeal 
 solely to native Christian readers, and do not in the slightest 
 degree touch the non-Christian community. Moreover, many 
 of these are translations, and no translation, however excellent, 
 is capable of affecting deeply a Hindu mind or touching and 
 stirring a Hindu heart. Even the Pilgrinis Progress, which is 
 one of the most suitable books for translation, and of which we 
 possess excellent versions, moves in an atmosphere of thought 
 so thoroughly foreign and so thoroughly Christian, that it does 
 not commend itself to a Hindu until he has entered the 
 Christian Church. Passing from the amount of available 
 literature to its effective value, the result of impartial inquiry 
 is even less satisfactory." 
 
 ^ During the first half of the nineteenth century missionaries displayed great 
 learning and dialectic skill in mercilessly laying bare the gaps and contradictions 
 that existed in Hinduism and Hindu mythology — not always in the mild spirit 
 of Paul's sermon as recorded in Acts xvii. This particular kind of literature practi- 
 cally left no pregnable points unattacked, and is therefore relatively complete. 
 20 
 
3o6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 The Rev. Henry Haigh, Wesleyan missionary in Mysore, 
 labours precisely the same point when he writes : " Such ver- 
 nacular literature as we have for our Christian Churches is 
 simply English literature — done more or less idiomatically into 
 the vernacular, and always with much loss of meaning and 
 suggestiveness. In form and spirit, in everything but words, 
 it is English. And this is what our people have to feed upon. 
 Those who are baptized as children, and have a long training 
 in our schools, gain some conception of the meaning of our 
 books. That is, they are really receiving an English training 
 through the medium of the vernacular. But they are by that 
 very means made strangers and foreigners to their Hindu 
 brethren. There are no points of approach between them. . , . 
 The Christian Church of India is in great danger of having a 
 language of its own. We may call it the language of Canaan 
 if we please, but it is only English metamorphosed and sadly 
 attenuated in the process. . . . This is a real danger, as those 
 can testify who have watched the methods and listened to 
 the discoveries of many of our native brethren. After long 
 experience, I am bound to say that those discourses are 
 generally almost as foreign as anything an Englishman with 
 only ordinary powers of adaptation would inevitably deliver." 
 
 That is keen criticism ; but it comes from so authoritative 
 a quarter that there must be some truth in it. Similar impres- 
 sions and experiences have been laid before the last two great 
 Missionary Conferences at Madras (1900 and 1902), and have 
 caused them to devote more extensive, and above all, more 
 systematic attention to the promotion of literary work in the 
 service of missions. The whole of India has been divided into 
 nineteen language spheres, and in each of these a language 
 committee has been appointed, whose duties are carefully to 
 examine the literature already existing in the various languages 
 spoken within that sphere, to collect that which is good, and 
 to arrange for the production of healthy and appropriate 
 literature in larger quantities. The custom recently adopted 
 by several societies of dedicating competent men of literary 
 gifts exclusively to literary labours — a step emphatically re- 
 commended by the Bombay Missionary Conference in 1892, 
 and still more by that at Madras in 1902 — all tends in the 
 same direction. Thus the American Baptists have set apart 
 Dr. McLaurin exclusively for literary work in Telugu ; the 
 English Baptists, Rev. Dr. Rouse for Bengali ; the Wesleyans, 
 Rev. E. W. Thompson for Kanarese ; and the Church Missionary 
 Society, Dr. H. U. Weitbrecht for Urdu. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 307 
 
 4. The Mission School 
 
 In connection with the life-work of the Scotsman, Alexander 
 Duff, we have traced the developnnent of the Anglo-Indian 
 educational policy down to the year 1854. The Educational 
 Dispatch of Sir Chas. Wood in that year was the foundation 
 and point de depart for a Government educational system on 
 a large scale. Two great tasks w^ere before the Government, 
 to erect elementary schools all over the land for the illiterate 
 childhood of India, which was to be numbered by millions, 
 and to bring the High School system already in existence 
 under its own control, to give it uniformity, and systematically 
 to develop it. During the first period (i 854-1 882), the Govern- 
 ment concentrated its undivided attention upon the High 
 School system. By means of handsome grants it succeeded 
 in a comparatively short space of time in forming into one 
 system all the Middle and High Schools above the lower 
 secondary schools (cf. p. 181). And as it made admission to 
 the eagerly desired posts in Government service depend on 
 the examinations which were now instituted, it soon became 
 an impossibility for any High School to exist which did not 
 prepare pupils for these examinations. In one point the 
 Government went beyond the intention of the fundamental 
 law of 1854. The original idea had been that the Government 
 should only take part in the higher education of the country 
 by assuming complete oversight and control ; only in the most 
 exceptional cases was it to found its own schools. The Govern- 
 ment, however, soon struck out a new path. To improve the 
 school system, it erected everywhere model schools, which 
 were to serve as patterns, both in management and in results, 
 to the other schools of the locality. In districts where schools 
 were slow to link themselves on to the general system, Govern- 
 ment schools were built, and the tardy were thereby compelled 
 to submit. In minor details the school system in each great 
 province was distinct and peculiar ; each Presidency had its 
 own ideas and ideals. Room does not allow of our enlarging 
 upon these points of difference. But on the whole it is un- 
 deniable that a great change for the better was instituted 
 throughout the educational world of India. School attendance 
 became more regular, higher qualifications were demanded of the 
 teachers, the performances of the scholars showed much greater 
 regularity and solidity. Also the number of schools rapidly 
 increased, and the great Government grants, which covered 
 from one-third to one-half of the entire costs of equipment 
 and upkeep, emboldened small townships, companies, and even 
 
3o8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 private persons, to open new schools. Moreover, there were now 
 fixed standards of work throughout the whole country by which 
 school results of every kind could be appraised with certainty. 
 
 We cannot, however, pass over the fact that there were great 
 disadvantages bound up with the new school system. Whereas 
 in the first few years the Government preferred to appoint 
 missionaries as inspectors of schools, yet later on, and especially 
 after the great Mutiny of 1857, it turned its back almost entirely 
 upon them, no doubt out of exaggerated religious neutrality, 
 and chose with predilection Englishmen indifferent to religion 
 or non-Christian Brahmans for these positions. As the yearly 
 grants — the hinge on which the new system turned — depended 
 on the result of the annual visitations and examinations 
 conducted by these gentlemen, it came about that mission 
 schools, for instance, were often in a state of very undesirable 
 dependence on the goodwill or the good temper of officials who 
 were antagonistic to missions. How much caprice and party 
 spirit it was possible to exercise in the conducting of examina- 
 tions, the inspection of school buildings, and the criticism of 
 the school staff! How much vexation and worry were thereby 
 set in motion ! Since the examinations were the most important 
 thing of all to the authorities, for through them alone they kept 
 their hold upon the school, and since they were also most 
 important of all to the scholars, — for they were the gates of 
 entry to every position under the Government, — it came about 
 that undue weight was attached to preparation for them. 
 Teaching w^as more and more in danger of becoming a mere 
 barren examination drill, and the more so when, for instance, in 
 the Madras Presidency a fresh Government examination had to 
 be taken on an average every second school-year. English 
 schools are naturally disposed to lay too much emphasis on " text- 
 books," but in India at this time they became a perfect plague ! 
 With their phenomenal memories the Hindus would learn 
 entire text-books by heart for their examinations, without taking 
 the slightest pains to understand them or mentally to assimilate 
 them. And it was also a direct consequence of the uniformity 
 aimed at by the Government — a consequence that also worked 
 remarkably for the convenience of the inspectors ! — that the 
 text-books recommended by those in authority were introduced 
 practically everywhere ; these text-books were for the most part 
 neutral as to religion even, if not directly antagonistic to 
 Christianity, and their introduction simply meant that the books 
 compiled at great pains by the missionaries were crowded out of 
 existence. The net result was a tremendous increase in the 
 number of scholars and in good examination results, but on 
 the other hand an almost complete lack of independent mental 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 309 
 
 effort, a superficial self-satisfied arrogant head knowledge 
 without real education — a state of things of which a Bengal 
 Babu was the perfect type. 
 
 These abuses caused the Government, during the viceroy- 
 alty of Lord Ripon, to appoint a Commission in the year 
 1882 to ascertain what progress had been made and what 
 results obtained from the Indian school system. A most 
 experienced Anglo-Indian, Sir William Hunter, presided over 
 the Commission, which consisted of twenty members, of whom 
 three were missionaries — Dr. Miller, of the Free Church of 
 Scotland, and Principal of the great Christian College at 
 Madras, Rev. W. B. Blackett of the Church Missionary Society, 
 and a Roman Catholic missionary. Its proceedings and 
 report were published in nine folio volumes in the year 1884. 
 The main result was a change of front in the educational policy 
 of the Government ; it now turned its attention to the second 
 great task, hitherto neglected, the fostering and development of 
 the Elementary school system. Native and missionary elemen- 
 tary schools were to be recognised and assisted more than ever 
 before. The education of girls, which had previously been 
 almost wholly neglected, was brought into the foreground. 
 Special attention was to be given to the lower classes and 
 races, to whom the new school system meant most. (It was 
 the hill-folk and the outcasts with whom the missionaries 
 mainly had to do.) The ruling idea was to develop the 
 teaching already carried on by the State into a truly national 
 system of education for all India. Such are the characteristics 
 of the second period, 1882-1902. 
 
 There had always existed elementary schools in India. 
 They were of three types. First we have the " Patashalas," 
 which are principally to be found in Bengal and in some parts 
 of the Presidency of Madras {e.g. in the Tanjore District) ; they 
 are intended for the boys of those castes who are compelled by 
 their profession to acquire a knowledge of reading and writing — 
 the Brahman, merchant, and writer castes. Their teaching is 
 generally confined to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Another 
 great group of native elementary schools are the " Koran Purana," 
 or " Learning by Heart " schools, which are chiefly in the Punjab, 
 but are also found in several other parts of India, in Bengal and 
 Malabar for instance ; in these the principal task is the giving 
 out of sections of the Arabic Koran (for Muhammadans) or from 
 the Puranas (for Hindus) to be learnt by heart, and apart from 
 this they do practically no teaching ; they number well-nigh as 
 many girls as boys amongst their scholars. According to the 
 Government Census of 189 1, there were 154,500 scholars attending 
 the "Koran Purana" schools and about 809,000 the Patashalas. 
 
3IO HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 A third great section of native schools are the monastery schools 
 of Burma. Every young Burman is compelled to pass a number 
 of years at school as a kyaungtha (disciple) with the monks 
 (pongyi) in the nearest monastery ; these schools have been so 
 successful that 37 per cent, of the male population can both read 
 and write, i.e. about as many as in Italy, which has 37 per cent., or 
 Hungary, which has 40 per cent. Besides these. Mission Schools 
 have been founded in connection with every mission station in 
 India ; in 1881 there were 3020 such schools, with 84,760 scholars. 
 It will be seen, therefore, that something had already been done 
 in respect of elementary education, but what was this at the best 
 in comparison with the tremendous number of children fast 
 growing up in the length and breadth of India? 
 
 In different parts of the country different steps were taken 
 by the Government as they sought to establish a national 
 school system. In the Bombay Presidency the native schools 
 were set on one side, and a vast educational system created 
 and staffed at Government expense ; the consequence was 
 that any existing native schools were completely absorbed. 
 On the other hand, in the Madras Presidency only thirty of the 
 24,327 elementary schools are maintained by the educational 
 authorities, and this important branch of work is left almost 
 exclusively in the hands of communities, missionary societies, 
 and private individuals. In Bengal, the Punjab, and some 
 other Provinces, the Government endeavoured to co-operate 
 with the native schools already in existence, however faulty 
 those latter might be, to bring them under its own influence and 
 to develop them as a whole — an aim it has since accomplished. 
 This is not the place to discuss the pros and cons of the various 
 methods adopted. We shall only adduce figures to demonstrate 
 the growth and extent of education in India at the present day. 
 In 1 88 1 there were ten and a half million males and 432,500 
 females who could read and write. In 1891 the number had 
 increased to 13,400,000 males and 590,000 females. Of this 
 latter number, 11,300,000 males and 476,000 females were over 
 fifteen years of age. For 1901 the corresponding numbers of 
 " educated " persons of over fifteen years of age are twelve and a 
 half million males and three quarters of a million females, and 
 according to the statistics of the educational authorities there 
 are 2,129,000 scholars under fifteen years of age. In 1877 there 
 were only 66,202 schools with 1,877,942 scholars; in 1891, 
 137,944 schools with 3,677,912, or according to another census 
 with 3,368,930 scholars; in 1901, however, there were 147,086 
 schools and 4,405,042 scholars.^ For the maintenance of this 
 
 1 Whilst recognising all that has been done in this direction, let us not, however, 
 forget the other side of the picture. Even to-day the greater part of the youth of 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 
 
 311 
 
 enormous educational work, 4,700,000 rupees were paid out by 
 the Government in 1891, whilst in 1901 5,900,000 rupees were 
 paid. The entire cost of the work was estimated, for 1891 at 
 9,125,000 rupees, and in 1901 at 11,500,000 rupees. Thus the 
 Government pays out of its own pocket almost one half of the 
 entire sum, for the most part in the shape of " Grants in Aid." 
 
 In the year 1901 another great Commission on Education 
 sat, and subjected the whole Indian university system to a 
 thorough investigation. The most important of its findings 
 were embodied in the Universities Bill of March 21st, 1903, which 
 passed into law in 1904. The root idea of this measure is to 
 map out the academic training of the youth of India on a 
 more thorough and systematic basis. The standard of the 
 various examinations is therefore raised even at the risk of 
 lessening the number of students. Great weight is laid on an 
 adequate provision of teaching apparatus, on well-chosen college 
 libraries, on laboratories, and on objects and apparatus necessary 
 for the teaching of natural science. Above everything, however, 
 stress is laid on the duty of the staff taking a real interest in 
 the life and occupations of the scholars out of school hours. 
 An effort is being made in this connection to gather all non- 
 resident students into hostels which are organically united with 
 the colleges, and are placed under the care of the teachers. 
 Further, a clear distinction is made between University and 
 
 India is growing up without any schooling whatever. Reckoning the children of 
 school-going age at 15 per cent, of the entire population (as a matter of fact, 
 children between five and fifteen compose 26 per cent, of it), there were, in 1901, 
 five and three-quarter million such children in the Madras Presidency ; of these only 
 861,461 attended any kind of school, and the Madras Presidency, with the exception 
 of Burma and the Central Districts of Bengal, is that part of the country which has 
 the most complete educational equipment. Scarcely one-thirteenth of the children 
 of school age in India at the present time attend school (Rev. A. Andrew, The 
 Uneducated Children of the {Madras) Presidency, Madras, 1904). If we divide the 
 population of India into two great classes, the illiterates and those who have attended 
 some kind of school and have learnt something, there are in — 
 
 
 Illiterates. 
 
 Literates. 
 
 Bengal .... 
 
 • 70,550,531 
 
 4,194,33s 
 
 United Provinces . 
 
 46,212,917 
 
 1,478,865 
 
 Madras .... 
 
 35.803,347 
 
 2,406,089 
 
 Punjab .... 
 
 21,598,716 
 
 857,103 
 
 Bombay .... 
 
 17,383,545 
 
 1,176,016 
 
 Central Provinces . 
 
 9,582,098 
 
 294,548 
 
 Assam .... 
 
 5,903,957 
 
 222,386 
 
 Burma .... 
 
 8,139,651 
 
 2,223,962 
 
 Birar .... 
 
 2,630,700 
 
 123,316 
 
 Ajmer .... 
 
 444,824 
 
 32,088 
 
 Coorg . . . . . 
 
 166,540 
 
 14,067 
 
 
 218,416,826 
 
 13,022,77s 
 
 There is thus a great deal to be done still in connection with the elementary 
 schools of the country, 
 
312 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Higher Secondary education ; the Colleges must be housed 
 in special buildings. 
 
 The results of the Government school system are important, 
 both from a technical and from a scientific standpoint ; for the 
 religious and moral education of young India it is acknowledged 
 with practical unanimity that they are most ominous. Dr. 
 Martin, the chief director of education in Bengal, says: "The 
 more we consider the present state of things in India, the more 
 are we convinced . . . that the principle of religious neutrality 
 is made too much of. . . . Science has torn down superstition, 
 but at the same time it has created an aptitude for doubt and a 
 spirit of insubordination which destroy the very bases of moral 
 character." A devout Hindu complains: "The young people 
 of India regard religion as the ravings of hysterical women; 
 they no longer believe in a divine Source of all virtue; they 
 have become irreverent, disobedient, and unfaithful." Another 
 complains in the Hindu newspaper Indu Prakash in 1864: 
 " Education provided by the State ... is founded on the 
 benevolent principle of non-interference with religion, but in 
 reality it is the negation of God in life. ... It practically 
 teaches atheism. ... As soon as this is generally felt the cry 
 will go up to England : ' Father, Father, give us faith ! ' If 
 England will not hear our cry, then will the shriek go up to 
 Heaven : ' Father, Father, give us faith ! ' " (Stock, History of 
 Church Missionary Society, vol. ii. p. 503). 
 
 Down to 1854 the elementary school system, with the 
 exception of the native school, had been completely under 
 missionary control ; almost half the scholars attending the 
 High Schools had likewise belonged to them, and through such 
 scholars they had exerted a large and important influence. 
 They now found in the rapidly developing educational schemes 
 of the Government an all-powerful rival. What position should 
 they take up with regard to it? The mission school has of 
 necessity two main objects which the Government neither can 
 nor will include in its programme — the dissemination of a 
 fundamental knowledge of Christian teaching, and the training 
 of a body of native assistants. It seemed to be the best solution 
 of the difficulty for the two to pursue their schemes amicably 
 but separately, and for the missionaries to endeavour to render 
 their school system independent and up-to-date. The Basle 
 Missionary Society after a short-lived enthusiasm for the new 
 Government scheme, which was shared at that time by nearly 
 all the Societies, was the first to take action along these lines. 
 In i860 it severed its connection with the Government system, 
 and reorganised its schools along its own lines. The results 
 were overwhelming. On entering upon this new policy the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 313 
 
 Basle Society had hoped, perhaps in too sanguine a fashion, to 
 gain possession of the whole school system in the provinces 
 where it laboured. But instead of this the Government wrested 
 from them the direction of all things educational, even in the 
 midst of their main spheres of activity, Kanara and Malabar. 
 First of all, the English school at Cannanore had to be given up 
 because the Government had erected a similar one in the same 
 place (1861). Then at the English school in Kanara there were 
 not enough missionaries who, in addition to the ordinary school 
 subjects, were sufficiently masters of English language and 
 literature to satisfy the demands of the Government for a 
 provincial school of this type. The English school at Calicut 
 was simply crushed out of existence, owing to an elaborate 
 school plant set down by the Government in the immediate 
 neighbourhood. In the native schools such thoroughgoing 
 reforms were insisted upon, that of 1450 scholars in 1862, only 
 648 remained in 1866. In 1867 the missionaries sent an urgent 
 request to the Missionary Committee asking for re-union with 
 the Government educational system, and the committee 
 complied, though with heavy hearts, in order that the mission- 
 aries might not be driven to the wall, and robbed of all 
 influence upon the rising generation. Thus an educational 
 scheme apart from that of the Government was proved an 
 impossibility ; against such rivalry it was unable to hold one's 
 own. 
 
 Now whether is it better, from a missionary point of view, 
 to limit mission school education to the needs of the native 
 Christian community, or to use the large Government grants 
 as a lever by which schools may be so developed as to give 
 missionaries a commanding influence over the scholars who 
 pass through them ? Mark well ! The point at issue is not 
 whether missions should keep up sufficient schools to meet the 
 needs of the native Christian community. That is a matter on 
 which there has never been any serious difference of opinion. 
 The question is, whether missions should establish elementary 
 and secondary schools for the non-Christian youth of India 
 in order through them to disseminate Christian knowledge 
 amongst the heathen masses of the people. No branch of 
 mission work has caused such heated debate as this of schools 
 for heathen children. At the Decennial Missionary Confer- 
 ences at Allahabad in 1872, at Calcutta in 1882, at Bombay in 
 1892,^ and at the South India Conference at Bangalore in 1879, 
 it invariably led to animated and often to elaborate discussion. 
 It was of special moment that the great Missionary Secretary 
 of the American Board, Rufus Anderson, and his entire Society, 
 
 ' Allgem. Miss, Zeit., pp. 75, 434, 481 ; Basle Miss. Mag., 1893, p. 391. 
 
314 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 and along with them the EngHsh Baptist Missionary Society, 
 should cast their entire weight into the balance against the 
 maintenance of an extensive system of schools for heathen 
 children. What arguments did these opponents advance? 
 " School teaching is not missionary work." " It is no duty of 
 the home churches at their own cost to spread higher education 
 among any people whatsoever, save in so far as their immediate 
 raisou d'etre, the propagation of the gospel, is advanced there- 
 by." ^ Missions have neither a call nor a mandate to teach 
 English literature, history, mathematics, or natural science. 
 The preaching of the gospel to the heathen and the exercise 
 of pastoral care over the native churches is so clearly the head 
 and front of all missionary labour that everything must be 
 considered as pure akKorpiov which does not directly further 
 this end. Any union between the State and Missions can only 
 be to the detriment of the latter ; it is used by the stronger 
 partner, the State, simply as an auxiliary to the attainment of 
 its own ends, some of which are alien to the objects of missions, 
 and some of which are indeed antagonistic to those objects. 
 The inspection of mission schools by heathen inspectors, the 
 introduction of text-books utterly incompatible with the stand- 
 point of missions, the regulations with regard to the teaching 
 staff, school buildings, the school inventory, school hours, etc., 
 place missions at the mercy or the caprice of their opponents. 
 Besides, the whole thing is like a screw with an endless worm ; 
 at one time an order will be issued making all religious instruc- 
 tion optional, and only to be given out of ordinary school hours 
 (Educational Dispatch, 1885, in the North-Western Provinces, 
 withdrawn after pressure from missionary circles) ; at another, 
 it will be decreed that all the subjects that are under Govern- 
 ment inspection must be taught during the first five hours of 
 every day, whilst religious teaching must, if at all, be taken 
 during a sixth hour, when all the strength and power of 
 attention on the part of the children is exhausted (Travancore, 
 1902). It is a delusion and a snare, in an educational system 
 the whole efforts of which are directed towards examination 
 drill and towards the acquirement by the scholars of a parrot- 
 like facility in chattering English, for missionaries to hope to 
 accomplish anything of value in imparting Christian knowledge 
 — a subject that is of no use in the examination. The scholars 
 tolerate the period set apart for Christian religious teaching, 
 often unwillingly making the best of it as a kind of bad bargain 
 because they have a better chance of passing the State examin- 
 ations in a mission school, or because the fees of the mission 
 school are lower than those of the competing Government 
 
 ^ Rufus Anderson. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 315 
 
 establishment. But it is unworthy of missions to use good 
 teaching in secular subjects for an examination as a decoy by 
 which to entice, for purposes of religious instruction, that 
 portion of the youth of the country which hungers after 
 knowledge. And the results of mission schools, as regards the 
 number of baptisms, bear no sort of comparison with the means 
 and strength employed ; many mission schools are unable to 
 record one case of baptism in an entire decade. And further, 
 what could this dlite of highly trained missionaries, who 
 alone can be employed in educational mission work, in that 
 case accomplish along the lines of direct missionary work ? 
 Precisely the most gifted amongst them are confined to close 
 and stuffy schoolrooms, and both intellectually and spiritually 
 are becoming atrophied under the mechanical school grind, 
 whilst away outside, far across the thickly populated tracts of 
 land, millions are dying without having once heard the good 
 tidings of great joy ! 
 
 These are indeed weighty considerations, and they deserve all 
 the more attention, since it is incontrovertible that they have at 
 any rate a relative justification. But let us also hear the argu- 
 ments of the educational missionaries ! They admit, it is true, 
 that the positive results of mission schools, as far as baptisms 
 are concerned, are lamentably small during the time the children 
 remain at school. This is, however, inevitable, because the mis- 
 sionaries have to do only with children in the schools, and they 
 are not so foolish or stupid as to attempt to persuade youngsters to 
 embrace Christianity, a step the result of which they are as yet un- 
 able fully to realise. But if to the small number of those baptized 
 whilst attending school, there be added those who received in 
 school their first impulse towards a fundamental knowledge of 
 Christianity, but who have only been baptized later in life, mission 
 schools will be found to lag behind no branch of the work in 
 practical results, except the missions to the lowest strata of the 
 people and to the aborigines, with which, very justly, they cannot 
 be compared. And this comparatively small number of converts, 
 won directly or indirectly through mission schools, are the very 
 crown and rejoicing of Indian missions, the most brilliant 
 representatives and pillars of the Christian Church, the leading 
 spirits in the ever-increasing body of Indian Christians. They 
 are the officers of the main army, which is composed of members 
 belonging to the lower orders of society. Certainly regulations 
 and inspections at the hands of indifferent or antagonistic 
 Government officials are inconvenient, but they can be kept 
 within bounds by the strong influence missions are able to 
 exert in the world of education, both by means of their exten- 
 sive school system and the magnificent results they obtain. It 
 
3i6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 was a matter of the highest consequence that Duff had a hand 
 in shaping the famous Educational Dispatch of 1854, that 
 missionaries sat on both the great Royal Commissions upon 
 education in 1882 and 1901, and that missionaries are members 
 of the Senates of all the Indian universities. That, compara- 
 tively speaking, the conditions under which mission schools are 
 carried on in India are considerably more favourable than in 
 the English colonies of South Africa, is purely a result of the 
 labours of the great educational missionaries. From the 
 remotest times India has been dominated by a little body of 
 scholars which was in former years recruited exclusively from 
 the Brahman and kindred classes of society. To-day this 
 dominating body, in whose hands lies the government and the 
 future of India, is composed of the graduates of the Indian 
 colleges, and any one who wishes to exercise an influence 
 upon the future of the country must first win over these 
 men. 
 
 Now the educational authorities of the country are, religiously 
 speaking, neutral ; religion is taught in none of the schools 
 they have erected. The result of non-religious instruction in 
 India is, in almost every case, that a young man loses all belief 
 in the creed of his fathers, but receives no new faith ; and under 
 these circumstances the majority of those who have been through 
 the schools and colleges drift into agnosticism or materialism, and 
 lead a disordered and profitless life. If this spreading desola- 
 tion is to be fought against, it can only be (save for isolated 
 attempts on the part of both Hindu and Muhammadan reformers 
 to erect colleges on a basis of their respective beliefs) by 
 the education of a very large number of the future leaders of 
 the country in a specifically Christian atmosphere, and by 
 permeating them through and through with Christian conceptions 
 and ideals. And even if it be unfortunately true that the 
 periods for religious instruction, which is not made an examina- 
 tion subject, are looked upon by many scholars as a necessary 
 evil, yet on the other hand it ought not to be forgotten that the 
 Hindu nature is so essentially religious, that it is a compara- 
 tively easy thing to create a deep interest in these young men 
 for religious questions ; and nearly all educational missionaries 
 can tell of truly hallowed hours spent in the midst of these 
 unconverted young men, who hang upon every word that issues 
 from their lips. Besides, thanks largely to educational missions, 
 a fairly accurate acquaintance with the Christian religion and 
 the Bible have come to be quite an essential in good society ; 
 and this, too, contributes towards gaining the attention of 
 scholars during religious instruction. 
 
 Four general considerations, however, preponderate in favour 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 317 
 
 of mission schools. A new day has dawned for India. The 
 people clamour for education, and missions cannot repress their 
 demand, even if they would. Shall missions keep themselves 
 to themselves and leave this new development to itself, or shall 
 they enter the lists, make themselves masters of the movement, 
 and use it as an instrument in their task of Christianising the 
 whole land ? 
 
 One conviction forces itself at every step upon the itinerant 
 and bazaar preacher in India, and it is this — that the Hindu 
 mind is so intricately and inseparably bound up with its 
 pantheistic conceptions, its abtruse theologumena and its subtle 
 philosophical systems, that it is unspeakably difficult to bridge 
 over the gulf betwixt these things on the one side and a deeper 
 understanding of the Christian view of life and evangelical truth 
 on the other. Now the schools offer an opportunity, such as 
 can be found nowhere else, of introducing step by step to a 
 knowledge of the Bible just those intellectually gifted souls 
 who are most open to receive truth and knowledge, and of 
 teaching them to regard God and the world from a Christian 
 standpoint. This is preparatory and pioneer work of incom- 
 parable value, and such systematic elementary grounding at 
 the most susceptible age exercises an abiding influence on the 
 rising generation which no other branch of missionary labour 
 can possibly exert. Further, a flood of Western thought in 
 science, in art, and in mechanical appliances is now unceasingly 
 streaming in through the open doors of India. The Indian 
 Government is well aware that it can only attach India 
 in perpetuity to itself, it can only become one with India by 
 establishing an intellectual communion between England and 
 India, or, in other words, by transplanting the intellectual life 
 of England to India, as far as possible in its entirety. The 
 schools are the channels by which this remarkable fusion is to 
 be brought about. Now it is of the highest importance for the 
 future of missionary work in India that Christianity assert itself 
 in the eyes of the Indian peoples as the intellectual force par 
 excellence, the foundation and animating energy of all European 
 civilisation. And that can only be done by maintaining the 
 very best schools in India, and by teaching in them with force 
 and inspiration that the Christian conception of life is the only 
 scientific as well as the only satisfactory one. Finally, if the 
 object of missions is really to make the peoples of India the 
 disciples of Jesus Christ, it is impossible to rest content with 
 those branches of work which experience has proved fruitful 
 only among the lower classes of the people. A century's 
 experience confirms the fact that missionary preaching, both 
 in town and country, only touches the middle classes of the 
 
3i8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 people sporadically and the highest classes almost not at all. 
 The only means of access as yet discovered to these classes 
 are educational missions and, more recently, zenana missions. 
 On account of the enormous difficulties that present themselves 
 to hinder the conversion of any Hindu belonging to these 
 higher classes, it is improbable that there will be any large 
 influx from their circles within the immediate future. All the 
 more important is it, therefore, that pioneer work should be done 
 by spreading Christian thought in such circles, and by producing 
 in their midst a favourable attitude towards Christianity. Only 
 thus will it be possible to overcome the deeply rooted prejudice 
 of these classes of the people, and to make easier the adhesion 
 of succeeding generations to the Christian Church. 
 
 In conclusion, we may add that no Missionary Conference 
 in India has been able to deny the weight of these arguments. 
 The outcome of their deliberations has always been in favour 
 of mission schools. We have already mentioned that the 
 English Baptists and the American Board, after the official 
 visit of their missionary secretaries in 1854 and 1855, gave up 
 their schools for heathen children and limited themselves to 
 such schools as were necessary for the children of their 
 adherents. But the American Board soon saw that it had 
 made a great mistake, and it has gradually built up a fresh 
 educational system on its own lines. The English Baptists 
 have not come to the same determination ; amongst the great 
 Missionary Societies at work in India they stand alone in their 
 opposition to higher education. All the other Societies have 
 made a virtue of necessity and have incorporated their educa- 
 tional system with that of the Government, and thus promoted 
 their further development. To what an extent and on what 
 lines this has been done can only be shown in a sketch of each 
 separate Society's work. We shall here content ourselves with 
 giving a few details and some general statistics. In India, 
 excluding Ceylon, there are one hundred and forty-one 
 colleges,^ besides forty-four special faculties for law, medicine, 
 art, electrical engineering, etc., which of course do not come 
 within the purview of missions. Of these 141, Protestant 
 missions claim 44, or over 25 per cent.^ It is interesting to 
 
 ^ For the total number of colleges the only information at our disposal is the 
 Census Report of 1901. The number has slightly increased since then. So far as 
 reliable details were obtainable, we have rectified the figures for missionary colleges 
 from the most recent yearly reports. 
 
 - Their colleges, which are academical institutions of university rank, form so 
 remarkable a portion of Indian missionary activity as to merit our special con- 
 sideration. But the very statistics to which we are forced to refer in this 
 connection demonstrate with what extreme care even the best statistics upon 
 separate branches of missionary work must be used. There are two tables 
 of statistics at our disposal. Dennis, in his Statistical Survey (p. 70), 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 319 
 
 notice how the missionary colleges are distributed over the 
 Indian provinces ; this is a fairly reliable test of the extent 
 of missionary labour in the various districts. In the Bombay 
 Presidency there is only one, the Wilson College at Bombay. 
 In the Punjab there are six — under the American Presbyterians 
 at Lahore, under the Church Missionary Society at Amritsar, 
 under the S.P.G. at Delhi, under the Established Church 
 of Scotland at Sialkot, under the Church Missionary Society 
 
 enumerates thirty-four colleges with 22,084 students. The Decemiial Missionary 
 Statistics give thirty colleges and 8887 students. But Dennis leaves out the 
 C.M.S. College Class at Calcutta, the L.M.S. St. Andrew's College at Gorakhpur, 
 the C.M.S. College at Amritsar, the S.P.G. College at Hazaribagh, and wrongly 
 reckons as colleges the English B.M.S. College at Serampore, which is a theological 
 seminary, and the American Methodist Episcopal Institute in Calcutta. On the 
 other hand, the Decennial Statistics omit both the "Women's" College at Lucknow 
 (Methodist Episcopal) and that at Palamcottah (C.M.S.), the Bishop's College at 
 Calcutta (S.P.G.), the Ramsay College at Almora (L.M.S.), and the Colleges of 
 the L.M.S. at Nagercoil, of the C.M.S. at Cottayam, of the American Baptists 
 at Ongole, and of the Lutheran General Synod at Guntur. With the necessary 
 additions and subtractions, and the number of colleges built since 1901, we arrive 
 at the total of forty colleges given in the te.\t. It must be remembered that the 
 word "college" has a wide range of meaning in England and America, and has 
 come to be applied to all higher schools ; pains must therefore be taken in investiga- 
 tions such as the present to differentiate those which are "colleges" in the technical 
 sense of the term, and with which we are now solely concerned. But there is still 
 greater confusion with regard to the number of students. Nearly all these Indian 
 colleges are part and parcel of more or less highly developed educational systems ; 
 for the most part the schools are found under the same roof as the college, and the 
 pupils are passed on from the lower section to the higher. Now both the above- 
 mentioned tables mix up the actual college students with the scholars attending the 
 High Schools and other similar establishments, though in a different way, and in a 
 manner which it is only partly possible to check. To determine the number of 
 actual students we must depend on the reports of the Missionary Societies, and as 
 these reports often fail for years together to record the numbers for the separate 
 sections of the schools, we are compelled to turn back until we can find the numbers 
 actually stated. The table we have thus obtained is necessarily incorrect, since it 
 contains statistics covering five years, some of which have only been obtained by 
 calculation based on analogy. However, it comes as near to the actual fact as the 
 available sources of information render possible. According to this table then, 
 the forty missionary colleges have in all about 5930 students. Amongst Protestant 
 societies engaged in this higher educational work the leading position is taken by 
 the Scotch, its inspired founders. They have, it is true, only seven colleges, — four 
 belonging to the United Free Church, and three to the Church of Scotland — but 
 these seven Scotch Colleges have on their roll 3100 students, more than half the 
 total for all the Societies. Their great rival is the C.M.S., which possesses eight 
 colleges, a large number for a single Society ; and then comes the S.P.G. with six 
 colleges. Far and away the largest and most influential are the Christian College of 
 the United Free Church at Madras, with 800 students, and the General Assembly's 
 Institution (belonging to the Church of Scotland) at Calcutta, with 750 students. The 
 principal of the former, Dr. Miller, who has accomplished so much for Indian 
 education, is at the present time the most famous educational missionary in India, 
 a man whose vote has as much weight on the Madras Legislative Council or on the 
 Senate of the Madras University as in the great Missionary Conferences. The 
 Government has conferred high distinctions upon him, his own Church has given 
 him the greatest honour in its power by electing him Moderator of its General 
 Assembly, and his grateful students have erected a bronze statue in his honour during 
 his lifetime. 
 
320 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 at Peshawar, and under the American United Presbyterians,^ 
 at Rawalpindi. In Central India there are two — that of 
 the Canadian Presbyterians at Indore, and that of the United 
 Free Church of Scotland at Nagpur, Central Provinces. In 
 the United Provinces there are seven — those of the Church 
 Missionary Society at Agra and Gorakhpur, of the S.P.G. 
 at Cawnpore, of the London Missionary Society at Almora, of 
 the Methodist Episcopal Church (for both men and women) at 
 Lucknow, and one still in the making at Allahabad, which 
 has been used for purposes of higher education since 1902 in 
 connection with the Jumna Missionary High School of the 
 American Presbyterians, In Bengal there are six — four in 
 Calcutta (S.P.G., L.M.S., the United College of the Established 
 Church of Scotland and the United Free Church of Scotland, 
 and the C.M.S. College Class), one at Hazaribagh (the 
 College of the Dublin Brotherhood), and that of the Wesleyan 
 Methodists at Bankura. The remaining seventeen are all 
 in the Madras Presidency.^ Of the 16,703 students in the 
 141 colleges of India, 5930, or 35 per cent, of the whole, are 
 in the 40 missionary colleges. That is sufficient to show what 
 an important factor in the Indian academic world the educa- 
 tional work of missions occupies. Of the 5461 secondary 
 schools of all grades (High, Lower Secondary, Anglo- 
 Vernacular, etc.) with 586,628 scholars, 309 are mission schools 
 with 41,209 pupils, and of 98,133 elementary schools with 
 3,150,000 scholars, evangelical missions are responsible for 
 5529 with 152,442 scholars on their books. It has been 
 calculated that the pupils of the mission schools compose : — 
 
 35 per cent, of all the students in colleges (technical and professional colleges 
 
 excepted). 
 10 per cent, of those who matriculate from the high schools to the colleges. 
 
 20 , 
 
 of those who take the first academical examination (F.A. ). 
 
 25 
 
 of those who take the principal ,, „ (B.A.). 
 
 16 
 
 highest ,, „ (M.A.). 
 
 25 , 
 
 of the scholars attending primary schools for boys. 
 
 IS , 
 
 ,, ,, ,, for girls. 
 
 50 
 
 ,, ,, boys' boarding schools. 
 
 100 , 
 
 ,, ,, girls' boarding schools.' 
 
 ^ Also the famous Educational Institute for Girls of the American Presbyterians 
 at Dehra Dun now has University classes up to the F.A. examination. 
 
 ^ At Bellary (L.M.S.), Cottayam (C.M.S.), Guntur (American Lutheran General 
 Synod), Madras (the Christian College and those of the C.M.S. and the W.M.M.S.), 
 Manargudi (W. M.M.S.), Masulipatam (C.M.S.), Vellore (American Reformed 
 Church), Nagercoil (L.M.S. ), Ongole (American Baptist), Palamcottah (C.M.S. 
 — for women), Tinnevelly (C.M.S. — for men), Tanjore and Trichinopoly (S.P.G. ), 
 and Pasumalai (A.B.) 
 
 ' We have no means of checking these figures, which are taken from the preface 
 to llie Missionary Statistical Tables (pp. iii. and iv. ), as the final tables given 
 for mission schools on pp. 62-63 are arranged on a different principle to the corre- 
 sponding tables in the Goveriwient igoi Census (vol. i. p. 183). 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 321 
 
 The development of educational missions has entailed, as a 
 necessary consequence, the creation of a new class of missionary 
 helpers, namely, Christian teachers, possessed of special qualifi- 
 cations and training. Down to the year 1854 missionaries in 
 India, like those in other fields, were disposed, mainly for pur- 
 poses of simplicity and uniformity of organisation, to train but one 
 class of native assistant and to select the most brilliant and 
 most trustworthy of these for ordination. Then the Government 
 intervened and insisted upon having trained teachers in all grant- 
 aided schools, whilst for the higher demands of the middle and 
 high schools only such as had taken special qualifying studies were 
 selected. From the very beginning missionaries had frequently 
 employed non-Christians as teachers, particularly in schools that 
 were largely or entirely attended by heathen children, but on the 
 whole they had no reason to be satisfied with the experiment. 
 When the schools were taken over by the Government, many non- 
 Christian teachers had at first, unfortunately, to be appointed, 
 because Christian teachers of the requisite experience and skill 
 were not to be found. To remove this disadvantage, nearly all 
 the societies founded training colleges, whether in connection 
 with the teachers' courses instituted by the Government or 
 entirely independent therefrom. At the present time there are 
 forty-seven ^ such training colleges, by far the larger number of 
 which are for village teachers. But still they do not meet the 
 demand, and the question how to obtain an adequate number 
 of capable schoolmasters and schoolmistresses for the very 
 extensive educational work is a regular subject of discussion at 
 the Indian missionary conferences. 
 
 The educational ladder in the work of most missions is 
 remarkably similar. First we find a broad foundation of simple 
 and primitive village schools ; these elementary schools only 
 carry their scholars, in general, as far as the Lower Primary, and 
 the school buildings are as simple as possible, even forms being 
 lacking in the majority of them. After passing through this 
 school, the better scholars are assembled in a station school, 
 which is ordinarily found only at places where a missionary 
 regularly resides. Whilst the sexes are seldom divided in the 
 village schools, they are separated at the station schools into 
 boys' and girls' departments ; whilst the village schools are 
 merely day schools, those at the stations are generally boarding 
 schools ; whilst heathen children are admitted to the village 
 schools, the boarding houses of the station schools will only 
 accept Christian children as a general rule, and heathen 
 children are merely invited to attend as day scholars. The station 
 
 ^ There are in India altogether 170 such training colleges. The missionary 
 quota thereto is thus over 25 per cent, of the whole. 
 
 21 
 
322 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 schools generally take the scholars as far as the Upper Primary 
 or Lower Secondary. Nearly all the larger missions crown 
 their school system with one or several more advanced institu- 
 tions, according as value is set upon educational work, and 
 according to the extent to which it is carried on. Those with 
 more modest pretensions content themselves with planning a 
 " High School " at the summit of their ascending series ; others, 
 whose school system is further developed, erect several " High 
 Schools " in the central town of a large mission district, and then 
 terminate the whole with a University college. If this sequence 
 of village school, station school, high school, and college be borne 
 in mind, we shall have a good general idea of the schools in con- 
 nection with any mission. Local or provisional necessities may 
 sometimes be responsible for slight deviations. 
 
 It is true that in this connection great difficulties are experi- 
 enced in many of the elementary schools owing to the large 
 number of Christian children from the outcaste strata of the popu- 
 lation, and that the outlook is by no means everywhere a happy 
 one. In the Presidency of Madras (excepting Travancore and 
 Cochin),of 636,344 Roman Catholics and 372,279 Protestants there 
 were, according to the calculations of the Scotch missionary. Rev. 
 Adam Andrew, in 1901, not less than 734,000 Christians above 
 five years of age who could neither read nor write. In the two 
 districts of Nellore and Kistna, the headquarters of American 
 Baptist missions, the Census of 1901 gives 154,312 Christians, of 
 whom 15,770 are Roman Catholics and 138,542 Protestant. Of 
 these 126,290 have received no education whatever, and 14,500 
 children of school-going age attend no school. School training 
 is something quite new for these outcaste classes. Missions have 
 neither the means, nor would they deem it wise, to build schools 
 wholly at their own expense, and even if they did so, they have 
 no power to insist on regular attendance. Thus there is plenty 
 of room, especially in these Panchama missions, for developing 
 the system of elementary schools. A model system is that, for 
 example, of the Basle Missionary Society, which has 15,054 
 church members and 10,339 scholars, the latter being divided into 
 6875 heathen and 3464 Christian children. That is to say, that 
 23 per cent, of the children of Christian parents, or nearly all those 
 of school age, did as a matter of fact attend school. Even better 
 figures can be shown by the United Free Church of Scotland, 
 which is, of course, above all an educational mission. 
 
 On an average, Protestant Christians, in spiteof being mostly 
 drawn from the lowest classes, excel all other strata of the popu- 
 lation in India with the one exception of the Brahmans, as far 
 as education is concerned. In the Madras Presidency, for 
 example, English is spoken by one Hindu in every 132, by one 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 323 
 
 Muhammadan in every 157, but by one in every 15 Christians. 
 One-fifth of those who can read and write in this province are 
 Christians. Still more advantageous to the Christian element is 
 the condition of the weaker sex in this province. In every 10,000 
 women, 70 of those who can read and write are Hindus, 86 
 Muhammadans, but 913 are Christians. Of the 20,3 14 women in 
 India who understand English one is a Jain, JJ are Muhammadans, 
 1770 Hindus, but 18,402 are Christians ! 
 
 5. Other Missionary Work among the 
 Educated Classes 
 
 Missionaries did not rest content with building colleges and im- 
 parting Christian teaching within their walls. They were deter- 
 mined to use every avenue of approach by which a knowledge of 
 Christianity, as the truth that is able to save the soul, might be 
 imparted to those circles which were ready to receive Western 
 culture. Beginning with adults, and step by step descending to 
 school-children, let us consider their more important efforts in 
 this direction. We shall find that work amongst the educated 
 heathen population and amongst the English-trained native 
 Christians goes hand in hand, and that all these efforts are put 
 forth with a view to both classes. 
 
 The English-speaking educated classes — just like the 
 educated classes in every country — are, comparatively speaking, 
 difficult of access. They are mostly found in the large towns, 
 in influential positions, working under high pressure and subject 
 to many distractions. It is not possible to estimate how many 
 English-speaking natives there are in India, apart from the 
 Eurasians. The Government Census of 1891 gave 386,032; 
 that of 1901 gives 0*57 per cent, of the whole population, i.e. 
 \\ millions. But that is no doubt too high an estimate ; at the 
 very most we could only expect the figures of 1891 to have 
 about doubled. Yet the influence of these men, the intellectual 
 elite of India, is far greater than might be inferred from such 
 modest figures. It is just in such circles, however, that very 
 great obstacles lay in the path of Christianity. The irreligion 
 which prevails in the schools through which the majority of 
 them have passed has deeply impregnated them with the 
 spirit of agnosticism and materialism. All the religious move- 
 ments of modern Hinduism, the Brahmo Samaj, theosophy, 
 the Swami Vivekananda, Mrs. Besant, the Arya Samaj and 
 others, win the greater part of their adherents from these classes 
 of society. On the other hand, we have universal testimony 
 to the effect that amongst them is to be found many a Nice- 
 
324 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 demus, and many who are convinced, at any rate intellectually, 
 of the truth of Christianity. The ordinary name for such 
 persons in India is " borderers." Their influence and importance 
 is so great that particular attention must be paid to them. 
 They are accessible to English literature and every kind of 
 work in the English language. For this reason Bishop Cotton 
 and other distinguished men have arranged cycles of apologetic 
 lectures ; a plan that met with even more acceptance was to 
 persuade famous preachers and professors from both England 
 and America to undertake lecturing tours in India. In 1872 
 Dr. Seelye, an American theological professor, held a series of 
 evangelistic lectures at Bombay, Ahmadnagar, and Poona. 
 In 1882, a clever American theologian, Rev. Joseph Cook, and 
 a former Free Church of Scotland missionary. Rev. Murray 
 Mitchell, travelled through the length and breadth of India. 
 In the two winters of 1886 and 1887 the Church Missionary 
 Society conducted two splendidly organised " Winter Missions " 
 in every part of its Indian field. During the first winter the 
 missioners were their own Secretary, Rev. Mr. Wigram and his 
 son, whilst in the following year eight eminent speakers, four 
 clergymen and four laymen, formed the deputation. In 1889 
 the Keswick Convention sent Mr. Grubb to visit South India 
 and Ceylon. In the next few years there followed Dr. Pente- 
 cost, Rev. Wm. Haslam, George Muller, Lord Radstock, 
 Rev. E. N. Thwaites and others, partly in connection with 
 individual missionary societies, partly to carry on revival 
 work generally amongst the native Christians and the educated 
 Hindus. As a result of the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 
 1893, Miss Caroline Haskell, an earnest and wealthy American 
 lady, gave a donation of twenty thousand dollars that a lecturing 
 tour in India might be undertaken every few years by some 
 distinguished theologian. The first to undertake the mission 
 was Rev. J. H. Barrows, D.D., who had presided over the 
 Chicago Congress, and his tour in 1896 was an important event 
 for India. In later years he has been followed by Dr. Fair- 
 bairn of Oxford and Dr. Cuthbert Hall of New York. One 
 disadvantage ot these lecturing tours is that the lecturers 
 themselves are not sufficiently familiar with Indian ideas and 
 ways of thinking, and they therefore speak and act almost 
 invariably purely as Americans or Englishmen. On all hands 
 it is admitted, however, that streams of blessing and awakening 
 to better things have resulted from these meetings — at which 
 immense audiences have been the general rule. Since 1900 the 
 Church Missionary Society has maintained a missionary in 
 Bombay, Rev. Hector McNeile, M.A., and the Wesleyan 
 Methodist Missionary Society one at Madras, the Rev. T, W. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 325 
 
 Kellett, M.A. (on his much lamented early death succeeded by 
 the Rev. D. G. M. Leith), for the sole purpose of exercising 
 pastoral care over all those, both in these cities and for a 
 considerable distance round, who have received an English 
 education. This ought to be done more extensively, so that 
 some one might always give personal attention to those who 
 have left school, might confirm the religious impressions there 
 made upon them, and deepen their knowledge of Christian 
 truth. 
 
 Next in importance to the class just considered — i.e. those 
 who have passed through the schools and grown up — comes 
 that consisting of the 16,700 students now in the colleges. 
 For the 6000 of this number who are pursuing their studies in 
 mission colleges, Christian oversight is by no means limited to 
 class instruction. Everywhere the missionaries are building 
 hostels, separate ones being provided for Christian and heathen 
 students ; these hostels are for the most part modest establish- 
 ments, where for a very small sum students can obtain board 
 and lodging, and those who are Christians religious instruction 
 also. And as far as the missionaries' time allows, they 
 endeavour to assist the students, who are generally very 
 inexperienced and have difficulty in following the lectures, 
 which are exclusively in English, in their home studies and 
 preparation. Besides this, they conduct Bible classes, debating 
 societies, and those kinds of athletics for which Englishmen 
 are always such enthusiasts. 
 
 Efforts are, however, also made to gain an influence over the 
 students who do not belong to missionary colleges. These 
 young men almost invariably reside in the midst of temptation 
 and in great poverty, and various missionaries, particularly those 
 belonging to the Church Missionary Society and the English 
 Baptist Missionary Society, made efforts a considerable time 
 back to get hold of some of them ; but the first systematic 
 attempt to win these particular young men was made by the 
 Oxford Brotherhood in Calcutta. In 1894 ^ hostel was built 
 for them, which was at once enthusiastically patronised. Of yet 
 greater importance has been a journal, which was founded by 
 the Brotherhood specially for these particular circles ; it was 
 called EpipJiaiiy, and has become an open meeting-place for 
 both Christians and heathen to discuss their spiritual difficulties 
 and problems ; undoubtedly this has been a most fruitful 
 undertaking. We have already mentioned that this magazine, 
 with its three thousand subscribers, is one of the most widely 
 read organs connected with Indian missions, and amongst the 
 students it probably wields far and away the largest influence. 
 The Church Missionary Society followed some years later with 
 
326 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 a hostel at Allahabad, opened in 1901.^ It then went a step 
 farther, and located in Allahabad a special students' missionary. 
 Rev. W. E. S. Holland, well known to English students as 
 one of the Secretaries of the Student Volunteer Missionary 
 Union. Student hostels in University cities, however, will 
 probably soon become more important when the Indian Uni- 
 versities cease to be merely examining bodies and become 
 real teaching bodies like those of Scotland and Germany. This 
 has already been accomplished in Lahore, it is being arranged 
 for at Allahabad, at the Muir College there, and is a thing 
 greatly to be desired in India. 
 
 Still more important was the advent of the Young Men's 
 Christian Association and kindred organisations in work 
 amongst the youth of India. Since the year 1886 or there- 
 abouts a^ powerful missionary spirit has been stirring the 
 student world of Great Britain and America ; and just as the 
 same spirit has gradually won for itself a foothold in all Pro- 
 testant countries on the Continent of Europe, so has it affected 
 almost every part of the world-wide mission field. There are 
 various associations at work ; sometimes their lines of operations 
 are parallel, sometimes they merge the one into the other. The 
 most important are (i) the Indian National Council of the 
 Young Men's Christian Association and the particular branch 
 of this Association which has undertaken to work at the Uni- 
 versities, the Intercollegiate Y.M.C.A. of India and Ceylon. 
 The first branch of the Y.M.C.A. was formed at Trivandrum, 
 South Travancore, in 1870. In 1889 the first Secretary of this 
 organisation landed in India and took up his residence in 
 Madras. (2) The Young Women's Christian Association has 
 likewise a special branch for University work. (3) The Student 
 Volunteer Movement of India and Ceylon (in close relations 
 with the Intercollegiate Y.M.C.A.). All are branches of the 
 World's Student Christian Federation, which was founded in 
 Sweden in 1895, and of which John Mott is the General Secre- 
 tary. All three organisations are intended for Englishmen as 
 well as Indians, for Hindus and Muhammadans as well as for 
 Christians. It is therefore impossible to estimate exactly the 
 extent of the missionary work they perform. In 1900 the 
 Y.M.C.A. possessed in India and Burma 131 branches with a 
 membership of 5265, to which we must add 21 branches and 
 750 members in Ceylon. Of these, 41 branches with 3000 
 students (1903) belong to the "Intercollegiate Department"; 
 that is to say, they are at work entirely amongst students. The 
 Young Women's Christian Association had in 1900 260 branch 
 associations with 3903 members in India and Burma, and five 
 ^ The C.M.S. have a hostel in Lahore for Christian students. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 327 
 
 branches in Ceylon with 500 on their books. Twenty-eight of 
 these, with 500 members, belong to the Intercollegiate Depart- 
 ment. The Y.W.C.A. branch associations were united in 1896 
 in a " National Union for India, Burma, and Ceylon." The 
 development of work amongst the students is due to Robert 
 Wilder, who from 1892 to 1902 placed his whole strength 
 and great eloquence at the service of the movement, whilst 
 occupying secretaryships at Calcutta, Poona, and Coonoor ; 
 and to John Mott, who in the winter of 1895-1896 went 
 from college to college all over India as in one long triumphal 
 procession. The centres of this work are of course at those 
 places where students most do congregate — Calcutta, the first 
 in importance of all, Madras, Bombay, Lahore, Colombo, and 
 Allahabad. At Madras a former Postmaster-General of the 
 United States and a most generous man, Mr. Wanamaker, 
 has presented a truly imposing building to serve as head- 
 quarters of the movement, from which a highly gifted Swede, 
 L. P. Larsen, carries on a splendid and many-sided activity. 
 In Calcutta the work amongst the Europeans and Eurasians, 
 and those of pure Indian descent, has been divided and con- 
 centrated at two centres, each favourably situated for its 
 respective operations. The headquarters of the work amongst 
 the women students at Allahabad is the " Lady Muir 
 Memorial," of which Miss Agnes de Selincourt is the 
 Directress; more recently, in 1904, a training school for 
 zenana missionaries and Bible-women has been linked on 
 to its other activities. The Young Women's Christian 
 Association also possesses premises of its own in Bombay, 
 and these serve as headquarters for manifold missionary 
 labours. In 1905 a beautiful new building was erected at 
 Colombo for the Young Men's Christian Association, at a 
 cost of over ;^50oo. 
 
 For younger scholars of both sexes there has been an im- 
 portant extension of Sunday-school work during the last two 
 decades. After various lesser attempts made by Carey (at 
 Serampore in 1803) and other missionaries, more particularly 
 those belonging to the American Presbyterians, Dr. Scott, 
 the American Methodist, made an impassioned appeal to 
 missionaries assembled at the General Missionary Conference 
 held at Allahabad in 1872, to introduce Sunday schools on the 
 " group system," both amongst the children of the native 
 Christians and amongst those coming from heathen homes. In 
 1876 the India Sunday School Union was founded. The 
 American missionaries were the protagonists and prime movers 
 in this new department. They established Sunday schools 
 mainly in connection with their mission schools ; in some places 
 
328 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 they succeeded in creating them even without such support. 
 Since that time the English missionary societies and, somewhat 
 later, most of the German and Scandinavian societies have 
 become warm supporters of the Sunday schools ; the only 
 difference being that the last-named societies have confined 
 their work mainly to children of Christian parentage. The 
 Sunday-school Union, whose President is that most distin- 
 guished Indian Christian, Sir Harnam Singh Ahluwalia of 
 Kapurthala, is at present under the direction of two special 
 missionaries (of whom one is a lady) ; to it belong 4360 Sunday 
 schools and 165,931 scholars. It pays particular attention to 
 Sunday-school literature, primarily with a view to the thorough 
 preparation of the teachers, but the scholars are not forgotten ; 
 its special organ is the India Sunday School Journal. The 
 International Sunday School Lesson Syllabus is printed in 
 several languages. A co-ordinate organisation of more recent 
 date is the " Children's Special Service Mission " ; it seeks to 
 arrange religious gatherings especially for children, to produce 
 and circulate useful literature, and most important of all, to give 
 assistance and inspiration in regular daily Bible reading. In 
 this last endeavour it is working hand in hand with the " Inter- 
 national Bible Readers' Association," w^hich receives special 
 support from the Church Missionary Society at Tinnevelly. 
 Partly in connection with these two organisations, but also 
 partly independent of them, there were in 1900 274,402 Sunday- 
 school scholars in India, 17,350 in Burma, and 27,899 in Ceylon, 
 a total of 319,651. How rapidly the Sunday-school system 
 has developed is shown by the following figures: in 1881 there 
 were only 61,688 Sunday-school scholars in India; in 1890 
 there were 135,565, and in 1900 274,402. A parallel organisa- 
 tion, which is zealously and successfully carried on in circles 
 more especially American, is that of the Young People's 
 Society of Christian Endeavour ; it was only imported to 
 India fifteen years ago, but in 1900 there were already 
 174 branches with a membership of 4349 in the Madras 
 Presidency alone. Similar associations exist in Methodist 
 circles under the name of " Wesley Guilds " or " Epworth 
 Leagues." 
 
 A method especially beloved and cultivated in Scotland of 
 encouraging young people to a diligent and attentive reading 
 of the Scriptures is the holding of written or oral Bible ex- 
 aminations at stated intervals or on special occasions. Very 
 considerable use is made on the Indian mission field of this 
 practical method, at once to encourage Christian children in 
 study of the Bible, and also to spread abroad amongst Hindu 
 and Muhammadan children a knowledge of the Book of books. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 329 
 
 Prizes are offered either by individual friends of missions or by 
 congregations or societies in the homeland ; there are also 
 available certain foundations, the interest on which is regularly 
 set aside for this purpose. The best known and most bene- 
 volent of such foundations is that of Judge Peter Cator of 
 Madras, who in 1862 left a large sum to the Church Missionary 
 Society, the interest on which brings in, on an average, ;^50 per 
 annum. The greater part of this, though not necessarily all of 
 it, has to be used in awarding prizes to those most proficient in 
 Bible knowledge. These written competitions are always a 
 great event in South Indian Sunday-school circles. 
 
 6. Women's Work for Women 
 
 The conception of the position of the weaker sex which has 
 been deeply rooted in the Indian mind for centuries past, and 
 the customs which are the logical and inevitable outcome of 
 that conception, prohibit the women and maidens of India 
 receiving instruction from any male teachers other than their 
 nearest relatives. Only women of the lowest castes are exempt 
 from this prohibition, more especially outcastes on the one hand, 
 and on the other little girls up to their tenth or twelfth year. 
 The farther one goes in India from South to North the stronger 
 and the more insurmountable does the great barrier wall 
 erected about the weaker sex become ; it is strongest of all in 
 those districts where the influence of Islam is most universal. 
 The women of North India are banished to their zenanas; it 
 has been computed that of the 150 million women and girls of 
 India, 40 millions reside in the zenanas — a population greater 
 than that of Prussia. These zenanas are inaccessible to mission- 
 aries and native preachers all over India, and in the strong 
 Muhammadan cities of the North they are hermetically sealed 
 against all Christian influences. It is wholly impossible to 
 reach this great and influential section of the population by 
 means of vernacular preaching. 
 
 It is precisely the womanhood of India, however, which has 
 been, as is so often the case in other parts of the world, the 
 protectress and zealous adherent of traditional heathenism. 
 Hundreds of times when missionaries have thought they have 
 made a lasting impression on promising young life, zenana 
 influences have swiftly and completely erased it. These 
 " borderers " have not enough strength of purpose to resist 
 the incontrollable but mighty counter-influences set in 
 motion by their wives, their mothers, and their grand- 
 mothers. 
 
3 30 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 On the other hand, the desolate plight of Indian womanhood 
 called forth at an early stage the sympathy of supporters of 
 missions and philanthropists alike. The fight against the 
 abomination of the suttee was one of the first of the great 
 humanitarian movements set in motion by the missionaries. 
 Child-marriages and the enforced celibacy of widows are a 
 twofold scourge, against which not only missionaries but also 
 many of the most intelligent natives have striven for a century 
 past with little success. According to Indian custom, the 
 betrothal between those whom it is proposed to make man 
 and wife must take place as early as possible, and in no case 
 later than at the twelfth year of their age ; particularly are girls 
 of high caste, and especially Brahman girls, supposed to be 
 under a curse if they are not betrothed before arriving at the 
 age of twelve. According to the Census of 1901, 13 girls of 
 every looo are married below the age of five, 102 between the 
 ages of five and ten, and 423 between ten and fifteen. Un- 
 fortunately, this betrothal is binding on the girl under all 
 circumstances ; i.e., should the little bridegroom die, she is a 
 widow. How awful is the lot of the widows of India many 
 descriptions have endeavoured to portray, notably those of 
 Pandita Ramabai, who herself suffered in this way. According 
 to the Census of 1901, there were 1064 widows under one year 
 old, 1 2 17 between the ages of one and two, 2271 between two 
 and three, 4513 between three and four, 10,422 between four and 
 five ; that is, 19,487 under five years of age. The Census further 
 gives 95,798 between five and ten years of age, and 275,862 
 between ten and fifteen. A second marriage is in most cases 
 impossible.^ 
 
 ^ Even in the description of great and notorious evils we must be on our guard 
 against exaggeration. Such should be the case when we speak of child-marriages 
 and of the prohibition of the marriage of widows. Child-marriages are by no means 
 equally prevalent all over India, and still less in all castes. Between the ages of one 
 and ten only 3 per 1000 are married in Burma, Coorg, Cochin, and Travancore ; in 
 the Mysore, 10 per 1000 ; in Assam, 18 ; in Orissa, 21 ; in Madras, 27 ; in the Punjab, 
 29 ; in Kashmir, the Central Provinces, Rajputana, and the United Provinces, between 
 46 and 61 ; and in Bengal, Chota Nagpur, and Bombay, between 76 and 83 per lOOO. 
 (Jnly in Hyderabad and Baroda does the number mount to 11 per cent., in 
 Birar to 17 per cent., and in Bihar to 18 per cent. ; i.e., nearly one-fifth of 
 all girls under ten years of age. Only in Bihar is there a district in which 
 nearly 42 per cent, of all girls under ten years of age are married. And only from 
 Bengal do we hear of frequent marriages being actually consummated before the girl- 
 wives arrive at an age of puberty, with all their fatal consequences to the poor 
 children. It is, moreover, by no means the case, as is frequently supposed, that 
 the Brahmans because of religious superstition are the chief offenders in bringing 
 about these child-marriages ; the lower castes and the forest tribes are far more given 
 to this usage than the Brahmans. Of every 1000 girls married under the age of 
 twelve in Bengal, 191 are the children of Brahmans, 362 of the Ahirs and Goalas 
 (shepherds), 208 of the Chamars (leather-workers), 323 of other low castes such as the 
 Tantis and Tatwas, and 397 of the Telis. Nor is it by any means a universal custom 
 for widows to be prohibited from remarriage. Certainly in Bengal we find the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 331 
 
 We can easily understand, therefore, that the missionaries 
 were soon forced to consider how they could bring the gospel 
 to the women of India. If men cannot do this, it was urged, 
 here is an immense field opened to women workers. And in 
 view of the awful intellectual sterility in the midst of which the 
 inhabitants of the zenanas pass their lives, the fitting avenue 
 of approach seemed to be that of the school ; in some way to 
 provide them with mental stimulus, to kindle new thoughts 
 within their neglected and desolate hearts, to awaken them 
 from their century-long sleep, to reveal to them the busy world 
 beyond the zenana walls with all its ideals and all its strifes — 
 this seemed to be a work as full of charm as it was meritorious. 
 But there were overwhelming obstacles in the way of such 
 efforts. In the first place, there is the old and deeply rooted 
 belief that women neither can learn nor ought to learn. Even 
 to read the sacred books in the hearing of a woman is sternly 
 forbidden in the Shastras ; if her eyes but rest on the holy 
 books for one moment, or her hand touch their pages, they 
 thereby become unclean. Men looked upon women as scarcely 
 above the level of the brute creation, and women had grown 
 accustomed to consider this verdict the right one ; they did 
 not know that they had understanding and could learn. And 
 far worse still, the only females who had from time immemorial 
 learnt to read and write, and even at times to make verses, 
 'were the Nautch girls ; and because they alone possessed the 
 privilege of learning, learning had fallen into great disrepute 
 for all other women in the country. A__woman compromised 
 herself and became an object of the gravest suspicion when 
 she began to learn anything ! A prejudice so deeply rooted 
 as this is not removed in a moment ; endless patience was 
 necessary to undermine it little by little, and to bring about a 
 change in public opinion on this point. 
 
 custom in almost every caste and class of the people. But in the adjacent provinces 
 the prohibition only holds good for the castes of the Twice Bom ; all other castes 
 there allow their widows to marry as they like. In the Punjab the prohibition, just 
 like child-marriage, is met with, proportionally, only seldom, and even then it is 
 limited to the most distinguished families of the higher castes. The great caste 
 group of the Jats, for example, which consists of over seven million souls, allows its 
 widows to remarry without let or hindrance, and only those of the best families do 
 not do so. The literary war which has been hotly waged against this prohibition by 
 the social reformers, especially by the Parsi Malabari, the Bengali Vidyasagar, and 
 the Tamil Ragunalh Rao Bahadur (a title of nobility), is rendered so difficult because 
 of the fact that, according to a view very widely held in India, those castes which 
 allow their widows to marry are somewhat looked down upon and lose some measure 
 of their social standing, whereas if any caste desires to mount the social ladder it 
 may often make the first step in this direction by insisting strongly upon the ob- 
 servance of the prohibition. Hence we have the frequent spectacle of a new caste 
 cutting itself loose from some old caste group, and by strongly prohibiting the re- 
 marriage of widows obtaining social status and caste rank. 
 
332 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 We have already seen that only one woman in 144, or 07 
 per cent., can read and write as against 10 per cent, of the 
 sterner sex. According to the Census of 1881, there were 
 only 21,590 of the 21,195,313 women in the United Provinces 
 {i.e. O'l per cent.) who could at that time read and write. 
 According to the Census of 1901, 4*5 per cent, of the women can 
 read in Burma, the land of woman's emancipation; i"i per cent, 
 in the Madras Presidency, with its numerous and compact 
 Christian churches ; 0*5 per cent, in eager and talented Bengal ; 
 and only 0*3 per cent, in the Punjab and most of the Protected 
 States. The prejudice against education for women is so great 
 that the Census officials for 1901 believe that the number of 
 women able to read was intentionally kept secret, because the 
 disclosure of such a fact would have been a disgrace. 
 
 A second hindrance very difficult to surmount is that of the 
 child-betrothals and child-marriages. Only in the last decade 
 of the nineteenth century was a law promulgated, by which the 
 statutory age at which a girl may enter into actual marital 
 relations was raised from ten to twelve (!), and Hindu society 
 opposed this law by all means in its power, and chose to regard 
 it as an attack upon its religion 1 As the age at which marriage 
 is consummated is generally the time of final relegation to the 
 seclusion of the zenana, the only opportunity for school-life and 
 school-influence is restricted to the period between tenderest 
 childhood and the tenth or, at the very outside, the twelfth 
 year. 
 
 In the following account it is our purpose to describe how 
 during the course of the nineteenth century that great branch of 
 labour which is so characteristic of modern missionary enterprise 
 in India, women's work for women, has developed. We can 
 only mention in passing the faithful and self-sacrificing efforts 
 which since the dawn of Protestant missions have been, and 
 still are, made by the wives and daughters of missionaries. 
 Their work has for the most part been carried on in secret, 
 and little of it has found its way into missionary reports. As 
 the hot Indian climate almost entirely debars European women 
 from taking that part in the duties of the kitchen, garden, and 
 household generally which they are accustomed to perform in 
 the homeland, and as these are claimed as the lawful domain 
 of the inefficient, untrustworthy, but necessarily numerous and 
 cheap staff of Indian servants, missionaries' wives and daughters 
 have as a general rule had abundance of time for actual missionary 
 work, and it would form a noble and beautiful chapter in the 
 history of Indian missions were we only able to collate all they 
 have silently and unassumingly accomplished. Not only the 
 German missionary societies, but also for example the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 333 
 
 greatest and best organised of the English societies, the 
 Church Missionary Society, refrained on principle from sending 
 out women workers until about the middle of the eighties, 
 because the wives, widows, and daughters of the missionaries 
 were performing such a meritorious and extensive work 
 amongst the women of India. 
 
 (a) Its Origin {down to 1854) 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for us here to mention the fact that 
 even in the eighteenth century the veterans of the Danish 
 Mission had taught young girls in their schools, and that in 
 more recent times the same duty had everywhere pressed with 
 irresistible force upon the modern English missionary societies. 
 An effort was made at the same time in many places to exercise 
 some oversight of the greatly neglected Eurasian children and 
 to get them to come to school with the children of the native 
 Christians. Most of these schools were attended by both boys 
 and girls. 
 
 The first method adopted for bringing heathen girls under 
 Christian influences was the erection of orphanages and asylums, 
 and particularly in North Indian missions did these orphanages 
 acquire a distinct importance of their own during the nineteenth 
 century. The girls taken into the orphanages were almost 
 without exception baptized immediately after their entrance. 
 They then received a Christian training which inevitably, 
 thanks to the constant supervision of the missionaries, took 
 on a certain foreign complexion. When they went back to their 
 ordinary life, they found themselves completely out of sym- 
 pathy with the manner of life, the way of thinking, and the 
 point of view of their heathen neighbours ; they were no longer 
 part and parcel of their own people. That is the reason why 
 the plan generally adopted in the early years of the nineteenth 
 century of gathering native girls into boarding schools, where 
 they received gratis board, lodging, teaching, clothing, and 
 school-books, has not been persevered with. In attempting to 
 board the girls, one ran aground on the reef of caste prejudice, 
 and if board were dispensed with, no true home - life was 
 possible. The plan was only practicable when the girls 
 broke their caste rules — but they then became outcastes, and 
 baptism was their sole hope of safety. Only during the 
 last thirty years of the century have efforts been made 
 under greatly modified conditions again to tread this very 
 thorny path. 
 
 Both the London Missionary Society and the Baptist 
 Missionary Society were early in the field in their attempts 
 
3 34 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 to gather the young together in very modest schools, the so- 
 called "bazaar schools." In 1829 the Rev. Robert May of the 
 London Missionary Society had 3500 scholars in twenty-nine 
 schools built in and around Chinsurah ; a start was also made 
 with a " circle of schools " in Madras. These schools, although 
 principally attended by boys, made an effort to attract a few 
 girls. Both the Chinsurah missionary and his colleague at 
 Madras declared it to be impossible at that time to form a 
 school exclusively for girls ; and yet the Serampore mission- 
 aries, particularly the energetic Hannah Marshman, who 
 expended much strength on the venture, had already 
 temporarily succeeded in doing this at Calcutta ; her little 
 school for girls comprised forty children, but it was found im- 
 possible to continue it. Somewhat more successful was Mrs. 
 Wilson, the self-sacrificing wife of the great Scotch missionary, 
 John Wilson of Bombay. She devoted herself to this kind of 
 work from the moment she first landed in India in 1829, and in 
 a few years' time she had opened six schools, at which 120 
 girls attended. It was in her favour that the Parsis, who are 
 there most influential, know no caste, and the Marathas enjoy 
 much greater freedom in social intercourse than the Bengalis. 
 Wilson's second wife also took up this work with great 
 enthusiasm, and founded a home for poor and abandoned 
 female children. 
 
 In the meantime a Society called the " Calcutta Female 
 Juvenile Society for the Education of Native Females " had 
 been formed at Calcutta in April 1819, at the instigation of 
 Mrs. Marshman. Its chief object was the erection of schools 
 for girls. In 1820 it started with one school and eight children, 
 but in 1824 it had increased this to six schools with 160 girls. 
 A more successful undertaking, the " Calcutta School Society," 
 was inaugurated in September of the same year (1819); its 
 raison d'etre, however, was the founding of schools of all kinds 
 for the lower classes. It was calculated that there were then in 
 the capital and its immediate vicinity some 750,000 inhabitants, 
 and that out of all this number there were only 4180 scholars 
 receiving any education ; of these scarcely one was a girl ! 
 According to one calculation, which there is, however, no means 
 of checking, there were at that time only 400 girls able to read 
 in the whole of India. 
 
 The need for elementaiy schools was therefore a crying one. 
 " The British and Foreign School Society," founded by Jos. 
 Lancaster in London, was approached, and at the earnest 
 solicitation of this Society Miss Cooke was prevailed upon to 
 go out to India in 1821, and to place her services at the disposal 
 of the Calcutta School Society. However, one-third of the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 335 
 
 members of the Committee of this Society were Hindu gentlemen, 
 and they raised such spirited opposition to the engagement of a 
 schoolmistress solely to establish girls' schools that the plan 
 was abandoned. It should be noticed that the Society was 
 neutral on matters of religion, and had no wish to attempt any 
 Christian propaganda. Miss Cooke therefore took service under 
 the Calcutta Committee of the Church Missionary Society, and 
 very soon her enthusiasm led her to open a school for girls. 
 She was working at that time at her Bengali studies, and, 
 having occasion to pay a visit to a boys' school, she found on 
 the threshold a little girl who had been begging for months to 
 be allowed to learn with the boys, but in vain. Such a desire 
 for knowledge touched her heart, and although she knew very 
 little Bengali, she began her school for girls on the following 
 day with fifteen children. The numbers grew : at the end of 
 the year 1822 she had three schools with between 50 and 60 
 girls ; in 1824, twenty-two schools with 300 to 400 girls ; and in 
 1826, as many as thirty schools with 600 female scholars. 
 She and her friends succeeded in interesting the Governor- 
 General and his wife in her work, and under their patronage a 
 " Ladies' Society for Female Native Education in Calcutta and 
 the Vicinity " was founded in 1824. Miss Cooke now worked 
 wholly for this Society ; in 1823 she had married the Rev. Isaac 
 Wilson (C.M.S.), but after his death in 1828 she continued her 
 work with as great enthusiasm as ever. Encouraged by its 
 early successes, in 1828 the new Society set about the erection 
 of premises of its own, to serve as a residence for the European 
 lady missionary and her native staff (mostly Eurasians), as a 
 modest training college for teachers and as a practising school. 
 The Church Missionary Society contributed iJ"500 towards 
 the cost of the building, and matter for special congratulation 
 was the gift of over ;^iooo from a distinguished and intelligent 
 Hindu, Rajah Badinath Roy. Mrs. Wilson presided over the 
 institution until 1836; she then retired from the management, 
 and founded a Girls' Orphanage at Agarpara, near Calcutta. 
 Unfortunately, in 1842 she became a Darbyite, and from that 
 time withdrew from all missionary activity.^ 
 
 The prosperity of Mrs. Wilson's school, the growing acquaint- 
 ance and sympathy with the downtrodden condition of Indian 
 women, and the powerful advocacy of individual missionaries 
 
 ^ Mrs. Cooke-Wilson is described by those intimately acquainted with her as 
 being an exceptional woman, of real spiritual power and gifts. "Her wisdom and 
 gentle tact, her peaceful and yet cordial disposition, her deep and ever joyous piety, 
 her experience . . . together with a remarkable practical ability to turn to advantage 
 all the gifts of her helpers and every opportunity that presented itself, won for her a 
 measure of affection and esteem such as is only seldom enjoyed" (Weitbrecht, 
 FrauenmissioH in /ndien, p, S3). 
 
3 36 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 such as the Rev. Daniel Abeel of America, all contributed to the 
 foundation in London, on June 4th, 1834, of a Society whose 
 object was the carrying on of missionary labour among the 
 women of India; this Society soon assumed the name of 
 " Society for Promoting Female Education in the East," 
 
 In 1838 Captain Jameson founded in Scotland the " Scottish 
 Ladies' Association for the Advancement of Female Education 
 in India." This Society, which was largely animated by Duff's 
 ideals, split up at the Disruption in 1843 into the two Women's 
 Missionary Societies, belonging to the Established Church and 
 to the Free Church. On November loth, 1842, Frau Eickhorn, 
 wife of the statesman, founded at Berlin, with the assistance of a 
 Committee of ten other ladies, the " Frauen-Verein fur christliche 
 Bildung des weiblichen Geschlechts im Morgenlande"^ (Ladies' 
 Society for the Christian Education of Females in the 
 East), These were the first societies by which a helping 
 hand was extended by the women of Europe to their sisters in 
 the East. 
 
 Yet, in spite of all these well-meant and earnest efforts, this 
 kind of work was still only in its infancy in India, As late as 
 1840, Mrs. Wilson, who was by far the person best qualified to 
 speak on the subject, declared that as far as she knew only 5(X) 
 girls were attending school in Bengal, half of whom were in her 
 own schools. The conditions under which such schools worked 
 have been set forth by Storrow {Our Indian Sisters, 
 pp, 192-194), and his description is confirmed by all those who 
 were personally acquainted with the circumstances of the time : 
 " The superstition was general that educated women made 
 disobedient wives, and that the husbands of girls who could read 
 were most liable to die. Education, it was everywhere assumed, 
 would cause girls to be more conceited and unmanageable. 
 Since purdah ladies were untaught, what presumption was it for 
 the poor and low-caste to learn to read and write. Nothing but 
 evil and danger could spring out of such an unheard-of revolu- 
 tion. Think of the trouble and danger it would cause ! How 
 could girls, however low in caste and poor, go to school 
 unwatched and untended ? It would interfere with their meals, 
 their devotions, their freedom, and endanger their caste if not 
 their lives. Such were the difficulties suggested by ignorant 
 and superstitious parents, in whose wide circle of relationship no 
 reader probably could be discovered for generations. To meet 
 these objections, many expedients were adopted, A woman 
 
 ^ About the same time similar societies were founded at Geneva, Basle, and 
 Strasburg, especially under the influence of a stirring " call to arms" by W. Hoffmann, 
 at that time Inspector of the Basle Missionary Society ; they never attained, however, 
 any position of great independent usefulness. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 337 
 
 was sent round to conduct the girls to school and home again 
 who was stimulated to zeal by payment for as many as were 
 brought. Often the scholars were paid for attendance. Usually 
 food and sweetmeats were provided for them, and periodically 
 they received, even for meagre attendance, gifts of money or 
 presents of cloth. Each sum was small, but the aggregate 
 amount was considerable. The results were far from encourag- 
 ing. The attendance was most irregular. It ceased altogether 
 for trivial or imaginary causes. A desire to learn was seldom 
 seen on the part of scholars or parents, but greed and suspicion 
 were ever on the alert to have discipline and rule relaxed or to 
 obtain additional gifts. Now and then the school would be 
 entirely deserted through some foolish or evil report. An 
 attendance of twenty-five girls was regarded as encouraging. 
 They almost always came from the lowest castes and classes, 
 and left before they were eleven years of age, to be married, 
 or on some trivial pretence or other. Thus, through their 
 early age, the superficiality of knowledge, and the dense 
 ignorance of their surroundings, they retained little of what 
 they had learned, which usually disappeared as raindrops in 
 the rushing river." 
 
 (b) The Change in Public Opinion (i 854-1 880) 
 
 Dr. Duff was quite right in saying that this sad state of 
 things would only be remedied when the young men of India 
 had become so far familiar with Western culture as to be able 
 no longer to tolerate wives who were wholly illiterate. Only as 
 a new conception of the nature and position of woman found 
 its way into the highest strata of the male population of the 
 country could missionaries enter the closed doors of the zenanas. 
 About the middle of the century the signs of the dawning of a 
 new epoch were multiplied. One of the first was the foundation 
 of a society of whose absolutely private sittings in Calcutta Duff 
 only heard quite accidentally;^ it was "a secret society among 
 the educated Hindus for privately instructing their young 
 daughters and other female relatives." In these circles one of 
 the most highly respected personages was the Bengali clergyman, 
 Krishna Mohan Banerjea, and he used his entire influence in 
 endeavouring to awaken general interest in the instruction of 
 the daughters of well-educated families. It was also helpful 
 that whereas the British Government had hitherto opposed 
 all projects for the education of women. Lord Dalhousie, the 
 Governor-General of the day, favoured it then, and in 1849, "on 
 his own responsibility," he expressed the opinion that " the 
 ^ G. Smith, Life of A. Duff, p. 194. 
 22 
 
338 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Government ought to accord substantial and cordial support to 
 the cause of female education." And his exact meaning was 
 made evident that same year when the President of the Council 
 for Educational Affairs, Drinkwater Bethune, built in Calcutta 
 at his own expense a " Native Female School," an excellent 
 girls' school for children belonging to the very best families. 
 Although this school was only poorly attended at first and met 
 with but little success, it was still an attempt well worthy of 
 being recorded. Unfortunately, this upper-class school excluded 
 all religious instruction as a matter of principle. It has been 
 in the main the training ground for families belonging to the 
 reform movements of Bengal, especially the Brahmo Samaj, 
 and to it is the credit due that very often the daughters of 
 such families have received a splendidly liberal education. The 
 school attached to Bethune College is even to-day reckoned as 
 the premier girls' school in Calcutta. 
 
 Of immeasurably greater importance, however, was a new 
 method adopted by the missionaries about this time. In the 
 Calcutta Christian Observer there appeared an article in 1840 
 written by Dr. Thos. Smith, a Scotch missionary and one of 
 Dr. Duffs younger colleagues, in which he contended that the 
 only way to reach the women of India was personally to seek 
 them out in the zenanas and there to give them Christian 
 instruction and every other possible kind of mental stimulus. 
 The article provoked much shaking of heads and many spirited 
 rejoinders. It was not until 1 854, fifteen years later, that the Scotch 
 missionary John Fordyce and his gifted wife (they had only 
 come out in 1853) dared to translate Smith's theory into fact.^ 
 For this purpose he enlisted the help of a clever Eurasian lady. 
 Miss Toogood. The first house opened to him was that of Babu 
 Kumar Tagore, a scion of the distinguished and wealthy house 
 of the Tagores, though reckoning according to caste he only 
 belonged to the inferior branch of the family. As Miss Toogood 
 and a Bible woman named Rebecca left the house to pay their 
 first visit, Fordyce remarked to his wife, " This is the beginning of 
 a new era for the daughters of India." He was right; it was 
 the beginning of Zenana Missions, which are now, after half a 
 century has rolled by, one of the most prosperous and most 
 cultivated departments of Indian missionary service. Soon a 
 
 ^As early as 1842 the Society for the Promotion of Female Education had sent 
 out a lady missionary to the Parsi women of Bombay. But this was a matter of less 
 importance, because there is no zenana system among the Parsis, and thus the 
 peculiar difiiculties connected with women's life in India are only met with to a 
 small extent. Isolated examples of attempted zenana work also occurred in several 
 other places, e.g. in the house of the intelligent Jay Narain Ghosal, who presented 
 the C.M.S. at Benares with the site and endowment fund for the Jay Narain College, 
 in that of the enlightened Rajah, Badinath Roy, and elsewhere. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 339 
 
 number of other houses in Calcutta were opened to the visits of 
 this new Order, and a large number of missionaries' wives at 
 once devoted themselves with the utmost enthusiasm to the 
 work. By far the most famous of these was Mrs. Mullens, 
 the wife of a missionary of the L.M.S. and a daughter of the 
 famous preacher Lacroix. Her example was quickly followed 
 in other towns and provinces : at Benares zenana visiting was 
 first undertaken by Mrs. Leupolt ^ and Mrs. Tracey ; in Eastern 
 Bengal it was commenced by Mrs. Sale; and at Gorakhpur in 
 the United Provinces by Miss Bird. 
 
 It was a long time before there was any desire in India, even 
 in the most intimate missionary circles, for unmarried women 
 missionaries to be sent out. In the early thirties, so devoted 
 and zealous a bishop as Daniel Wilson answered the question 
 as to whether he would like any such missionaries to be sent out 
 in the following terms : " No ! Women can't do it. Both on 
 principle and from my experience in Indian missionary life, I 
 should oppose single women being sent out to such a far-off 
 land ; it is almost an absolute certainty that they would get 
 married within a month of their arrival " (Stock, History of 
 CMS. i. p. 316).^ As late as the middle of the century the 
 number of unmarried women missionaries — apart from the 
 members of the families of missionaries residing in the country 
 — was extremely small and tended to grow less and less. It 
 was only when zenana missions threw open a wide door for 
 their labours that their number increased with astonishing 
 rapidity. The time came when nearly every great English and 
 American missionary society had a women's auxiliary with more 
 or less independent power of action, and almost invariably these 
 newly established auxiliary societies found their first and most 
 important field in the zenanas of India. We will content 
 ourselves here with enumerating the most important : — 
 
 Founded in 
 Belonging to the S.P.G. : the Women's Mission Association in con- 
 nection with the S. P. G. . . . .1866 
 Do. do. B.M.S. : the Baptist Zenana Mission . . 1867 
 Do. do. L.M.S. : Ladies' Committee of the L.M.S. . . 1875 ' 
 Do. do. W.M.M.S. : Women's Auxiliary of the W.M. M.S. . 1858 
 
 ^ Who as Miss Jones had been the first representative to India of the Society for 
 the Promotion of Female Education (1836). 
 
 ' The good bishop is certainly in the right : the marriage of lady missionaries has 
 always been one of the difficulties of female missionary work. But, however disturb- 
 ing the enforced and frequent changes in the staff may be owing to this cause, there 
 is the great counterbalancing advantage that in this way a long succession of 
 brilliantly gifted wives drawn from the most cultured society in the homeland has 
 been found for the missionaries. 
 
 ^ Only until 1890. 
 
340 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 In North America: — 
 
 Founded in 
 Belonging lo the American Board : Women's Board for Missions (for 
 
 the Interior, iS68 ; for the Pacific, 1873) • • '^^S 
 
 Do. do. American ]5aptist Missionary Union : Women's 
 Baptist Foreign Mission Society (for the 
 West, 1S71 ; for Cahfornia, 1875; of Oregon, 
 1878) ...... 1S71 
 
 Do. do. Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society : Women's 
 Foreign Mission Society of the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church ..... 1S69 
 
 Do. do. Presbyterian Church North: Women's Foreign Mis- 
 sion Society of the Presbyterian Church (Norlh- 
 West, 1870; New York, 1S70 ; North New 
 York, 1872 ; Occidental, 1873 5 South- West, 
 1877 ; Pacific, 1888) .... 1870 
 
 Not content, however, with these women's auxiliary 
 societies which were formed with such remarkable celerity in 
 every direction, special zenana missionary societies sprang up 
 into existence in many places. In consequence of the pressing 
 necessity in Calcutta for zenana missionaries and the staff of 
 the girls' schools obtaining at least a measure of training, a new 
 departure was made in 1852 by the establishment of a teachers' 
 seminary, the *' Normal School for the Training of Christian 
 Female Teachers," and a society thus entitled was formed. This 
 was united as early as 1857 with the already mentioned educa- 
 tional society under the direction of Mrs. Wilson, and the joint 
 societies took the name of " Normal, Central, and Branch 
 School Society." After some hesitation this was changed in 1861 
 to the " Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society," 
 which was finally altered in 1880 to the "Zenana Bible and 
 Medical Mission," under which designation it is now known 
 both in England and in India. This often-metamorphosed 
 society soon became the actual pioneer and porte luviicre of 
 zenana missions. In 1861 it had in twenty-two zenanas a hundred 
 and sixty women and a hundred and fifty girls receiving its minis- 
 trations, and nearly all these belonged to the higher castes of 
 the Brahmans, the writers or the physicians. In i860 a new 
 American society came to its assistance, the " Women's Union 
 Missionary Society," founded in New York by Mrs. Doremus 
 on an interdenominational basis. It had the good fortune 
 to find at the very beginning of its career an organising genius 
 in Miss Britain, who unfortunately, after organising the work 
 of the Society marvellously in Calcutta and neighbourhood, 
 quitted India for Japan. 
 
 In order rightly to appreciate the results of this work down 
 to 1881, we will place all the reliable statistics to which we have 
 access in parallel columns : — 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 341 
 
 I85I. 
 
 I86I. 
 
 I87I. 
 
 1881. 
 
 ? 
 
 ? 
 
 370 
 
 479 
 
 ? 
 
 ? 
 
 837 
 
 1,643 
 
 28s 
 
 261 
 
 664 
 
 1,120 
 
 8,919 
 
 12,057 
 
 24,078 
 
 40,897 
 
 
 ? 
 
 1,300 
 
 7,522 
 
 
 
 1,997 
 
 9,132 
 
 Women missionaries (including Eurasians) ' 
 Native assistants .... 
 Girls' schools .... 
 
 Scholars at above .... 
 Zenanas visited .... 
 
 Females receiving instruction at the same . 
 
 (c) Golden Harvest {fro^n 1880) 
 
 However great the change that had come over women's 
 work in the Indian mission field during the twenty-five years 
 1854-1880, scarcely any one can at that time have formed the 
 faintest conception of the enormous development this branch 
 of labour was to undergo during the succeeding quarter of 
 a century. The development which has taken place in connec- 
 tion with one missionary society, the greatest (C.M.S.), will serve 
 us as a type for what has happened all along the line. For 
 a long time this Society could not (being in this respect 
 thoroughly in harmony with German views and ideals) come to 
 the determination to employ in its service unmarried women 
 missionaries — apart from the numerous missionaries' widows 
 and daughters, the greater part of whom had rendered it most 
 remarkable assistance. Whenever necessary, it applied to the 
 Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, to 
 the Society for the Promotion of Female Education, or to the 
 German " Morgenlandischer Frauen-Verein." The first of these 
 societies worked in such intimate conjunction with the Church 
 Missionary Society that it was regarded almost as one of its 
 own auxiliaries. Faithful to its principles and in loyalty to this 
 Society, the Church Missionary Society prior to 1880 refused 
 every request to send out women missionaries at its own 
 expense, with the exception of one or two rare cases where 
 special local needs had to be taken into consideration. In 
 the year 1880, however, under the influence of its President, 
 Lady Kinnaird, the Committee of the Indian Female Normal 
 School and Instruction Society began to develop a manifest 
 
 ^ During this period a good third of the staff was composed of Eurasians. Being 
 only half European, they have the advantage of being less susceptible to the burning 
 heat of the Indian summer, and, generally, of speaking an Indian language as 
 their mother tongue. By attracting them to and training them for this important 
 service for women, a work of real benevolence was performed towards their greatly 
 neglected and despised race. Most of the training colleges erected in India, especially 
 those in Calcutta, were intended for Eurasians. Nevertheless, the experiment has 
 been none too successful as far as they were concerned. As a race they are indolent 
 and deficient in character. The gulf which divides them from the zenana women is 
 generally insuperable — they are despised by Hindu society almost more than by 
 Europeans. They were thus hardly fit agents for pioneering so difficult and delicate 
 a work as that of the zenana missions. 
 
342 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 leaning towards union with certain Nonconformist, more 
 especially Presbyterian, circles : a new Presbyterian Secretary 
 was appointed to an office always hitherto occupied by an 
 Anglican. This roused such ill feeling in Anglican circles that 
 the latter practically severed all connection with their " untrust- 
 worthy" ally. This would have been the fitting occasion for 
 the Church Missionary Society to have founded a Women's 
 Auxiliary of its own. It was, however, so far from being ready 
 to do so, that one of its most respected Secretaries, Wright, 
 persuaded those who had broken their connection with the 
 I.F.N.S. and I. Society to form themselves into an independent 
 women's missionary organisation, the " Church of England 
 Zenana Missionary Society" (the C.E.Z.M.S.). But circumstances 
 proved stronger than all the plans of the Church Missionary 
 Society. In 1887 missionary enthusiasm in female circles at 
 home, particularly in connection with the Keswick Conventions, 
 became so great that in one year 17 lady missionaries offered 
 themselves to the Society, 10 of whom were ready to go out at 
 their own expense. As urgent requests were continually 
 coming in from the mission field for women missionaries, the 
 Committee at length gave way. That they were in the right in 
 so doing is proved by the rapid increase in the numbers of their 
 women workers: between 1887 and 1894 this Society alone 
 sent out 214 women missionaries ; by June 1905 the number had 
 increased to 410. From time to time it has made attempts to 
 absorb the C.E.Z.M.S., but this Society has preferred to remain 
 independent. And the parent Society and its Auxiliary have 
 come to an honourable arrangement by which the latter sends 
 its members almost exclusively to India, by far the most 
 important mission field for women missionaries, whilst the 
 parent body supplies independently all vacancies in other fields 
 that may arise. 
 
 As at the present time practically all missionary societies 
 carrying on any work at all in India send out women mission- 
 aries, and as many societies which have no other work there 
 (such as the Protestant Episcopal Church of North America) 
 participate at least in zenana missions, it would be wearisome 
 to review in detail the many different contingents of this great 
 army of women missionaries. Many societies have quite a host 
 of them. Thus the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, the 
 old Indian Female Normal School and Instruction Society, 
 maintains 104 women missionaries with 53 women helpers, a 
 native staff of 191 women teachers and nurses, and 84 Bible 
 women ; in 4375 zenanas which it visits it has 2728 pupils under 
 regular instruction, 3208 more scholars in its 64 day schools, 
 hospitals or dispensaries in 5 towns with 1892 patients and 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 343 
 
 nearly 100,000 consultations per annum, and it spends yearly 
 on this many-sided activity over ;^25,ooo. (These were the 
 figures for its jubilee year, 1902.) The Church of England 
 Zenana Missionary Society has 228 women missionaries and 
 100 women helpers, a native staff of 800 Bible women, school- 
 mistresses, etc., and spends about ^^42,500 yearly. Some two- 
 thirds of its entire work is carried on in India, Nearly all the 
 greater women's missionary societies have central headquarters 
 somewhere in India, whence the infinitely varied work of each 
 society is directed and superintended : such are the headquarters 
 of the C.E.Z. at Palamcottah, the Women's Mission Association 
 of the S.P.G. at Delhi, the Women's Auxiliary of the United 
 Free Church of Scotland at Madras, etc. To get any idea of 
 the diversity of the work accomplished, one must reside at some 
 of these central stations and study their working. Women's 
 work is not spread equally over the whole land : in Calcutta 
 and the vicinity there are 103 women missionaries (as against 
 99 missionaries) ; 6 training colleges for schoolmistresses, Bible 
 women, etc. (corresponding with 6 training colleges for catechists) ; 
 1 1 girls' boarding-schools, with 990 scholars (12 boarding-schools 
 for boys with 659 scholars); whilst in 15,600 regularly visited 
 zenanas 7600 scholars receive instruction. In the remaining 
 portions of Bengal there are 46 women missionaries as compared 
 with 33 men ; in the United Provinces 22 women missionaries 
 against 98 men; and in the Punjab 162 women as against 95 
 men. In the Madras Presidency there are 248 women mission- 
 aries as against 301 males. More and more does the number of 
 women missionaries in each district approximate nowadays to 
 the number of male missionaries, and sometimes they outnumber 
 the men. The missionary census of 1900 — the safest statistical 
 basis — enumerates a total of 976 missionaries in the whole of 
 India and 1174 women missionaries, i.e. nearly 200 more women 
 than men. In both these numbers the Eurasian element is 
 included ; but though it is certainly more considerable in the 
 case of women missionaries than amongst the men, still the 
 percentage cannot be anything like so high as it was in the 
 previous period, 1 854-1 880. And unless we are greatly 
 mistaken, the number of women missionaries is still steadily 
 mounting: from 479 in 1881 it had risen to 711 in 1890, and in 
 the succeeding decade to 1174 — i.e. an increase during the last- 
 named period of 463, or nearly equal to the entire number of 
 women missionaries in 1881. 
 
 Whether this be an essentially healthy state of things or not, 
 opinions differ in England and America. Let us endeavour to 
 form an unbiased opinion. That there is a great sphere of 
 work for a much larger number of women missionaries amongst 
 
344 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the 40 million zenana women, and the number of women at 
 least as great who, because of the Indian ideas on the place of 
 woman and on morality, can never be influenced by male 
 missionaries and their assistants, is not open to a moment's 
 doubt. Everywhere in India the question to-day is no longer, 
 " How can we open up the zenanas ? " but rather, " Where can 
 we obtain workers to enter the doors that open to us on every 
 side?" The peculiar conditions of zenana life render it 
 imperative on each woman worker to take up only a com- 
 paratively limited circle of v/ork, at most a couple of dozen 
 zenanas, and thus a large number of women missionaries can 
 be collocated together without trespassing on one another's 
 particular sphere. After missionaries had devoted over half 
 a century solely to work amongst men, it was time to enter 
 upon work for women in all earnestness, and the more so because 
 it was very easy to see that the latter clung most tenaciously of 
 all to old heathen beliefs and usages. 
 
 But the more affectionate and intimate the relations between 
 the women missionaries and those living in zenanas become, 
 the more severely is any interruption of the regularity of 
 visits paid there felt; and such are unfortunately only too 
 frequent, and work is only too often handed on from one pair 
 of hands to another. And the changes in the personnel of the 
 lady missionaries are particularly frequent. For this there are 
 a number of reasons. That in reality single or widowed 
 missionaries cannot do better than marry a lady missionary has 
 been already mentioned ; but it is not a matter so greatly to be 
 desired that other Anglo-Indians, civil servants and merchants, 
 should not infrequently turn in this direction when seeking a 
 wife. Further, the work in the zenanas is exhausting and 
 irritating, and of course this is precisely the case in proportion 
 to the number of visits paid by the women missionaries and the 
 extent to which they engage in educational work within the 
 zenanas. Very frequently their health can endure such a strain 
 for a few years at the outside. Then amongst these ladies are 
 many who have gone out wholly or in part at their own 
 expense and who possess sufficient means to live comfortably 
 at home. It lies in the nature of things that such workers are 
 more independent of the missionary committees, and are more 
 easily frightened away from their post by obstacles, illness, or 
 disappointment than one dependent on the Committee for her 
 whole livelihood. Then, too, whilst both in England and 
 America a certain measure of intellectual training and 
 theological equipment is fortunately always demanded of male 
 candidates before they can be accepted as missionaries, members 
 of the women's committees are often disposed to lower the 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 345 
 
 standard of education in the case of female candidates and to 
 rest content with the general culture possessed by a person 
 belonging to the ordinary educated classes in those countries. 
 The number of special preparatory schools for women mission- 
 aries is but small, and only a small percentage of those sent out 
 have passed through such institutions. Comfort is found in the 
 reflection that for zenana visiting and teaching in elementary 
 girl schools such a standard may suffice. That may be partly 
 true ; but it does not guarantee that unsuitable persons will not 
 be sent out, persons whose little blaze of enthusiasm will die 
 down only too quickly beneath the oppressive glowing heat of 
 the Indian cities. It is principally in the matter of capability 
 and perseverance in thoroughly learning Indian languages and 
 in gaining a thorough knowledge of the Indian mind and its 
 ways of thought that this faulty training tells ; it is self-evident 
 that for the delicate individual dealing which zenana work 
 entails, a thorough knowledge of the language and a sympathetic 
 comprehension of the Indian thought-world is indispensable. 
 And it is just in this respect that one hears the most keen regret 
 expressed with regard to many women missionaries, illustrious 
 exceptions, of course, being always allowed for. 
 
 With the rapid increase in the number of women mission- 
 aries, their work has been extended in many directions. The 
 two main branches of it have naturally continued to be teaching 
 in girls' schools and visiting the zenanas. The number of girls' 
 schools has now grown to 1600 with 83,622 scholars (as against 
 47,276 in 1 881), and the number of zenanas regularly visited is 
 given as 51,932 with some 39,894 under instruction. Concern- 
 ing the work of lady doctors we shall speak in the next section 
 of the present chapter. 
 
 As India is so pre-eminently a land of villages, it was only 
 to be expected that women missionaries, having started in the 
 large towns, should presently extend their sphere of operations 
 to the country districts and make attempts at itinerant work. 
 At first it must have been a truly remarkable sight for the 
 Hindus to see single ladies journeying for weeks up and down 
 the country alone with their tents and their servants. But they 
 had already grown accustomed to so many, to them, astounding 
 habits on the part of their rulers that they soon became recon- 
 ciled to this one also. And as the Hindus are in general so 
 harmless that a stranger may travel from the Himalayas to 
 Cape Comorin, either along the populous main lines of com- 
 munication or through the remotest jungles, unarmed, women 
 missionaries encounter no more peril on these long journeys 
 than they would at home ; the only difference is that the 
 Indian climate has always to be reckoned with. These village 
 
346 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 missions have received much attention by women missionaries. 
 At the beginning of the cool season hundreds of them start off 
 across the country in every direction, gathering about them 
 wherever they go the women and children of the villages and 
 hamlets. They are particularly welcome guests when they 
 bring with them a well-filled medicine chest and know how to 
 make a good use of it. Since about 1880 these village missions 
 have formed a recognised branch of women's missionary work, 
 especially in North India. 
 
 7. Medical Missions 
 
 In India, as in other mission fields, nearly all missionaries 
 have at some time or other been in a position to use whatever 
 measure of medical skill they possessed in the healing of 
 disease ; and many of them have been able to accomplish much 
 good by means of this modest service of love, even although 
 they may not have enjoyed the advantages of special medical 
 training. For a long time past, therefore, it has been deemed 
 advisable that all young missionaries should be instructed in 
 at least the elements of medicine. India has been the country 
 par excellence in which, from the very commencement of the 
 English occupation, medical men have demonstrated what 
 brilliant service they were capable of rendering to their race. 
 It was a doctor — Dr. Gabriel Boughton — who in 1636, in return 
 for medical assistance he had been able to afford the Great 
 Moghul, Shah Jehan, obtained permission from that grateful 
 monarch for Englishmen to settle at various ports on the 
 Coromandel coast. Another doctor, Hamilton by name, 
 materially aided the objects of a British Embassy, which he 
 accompanied in 171 3, by curing another Great Moghul of a 
 painful malady. These and similar examples early pointed out 
 what a large degree of support Protestant missions might hope 
 to derive from medical skill. 
 
 From the first there have always been some doctors in the 
 ranks of the missionaries who have practised medicine to a 
 greater or less extent. The first we read of was Justus 
 Heurnius, a Dutchman (1624-1638). The Danish Mission sent 
 out quite a number of doctors— Messrs. Schlegelmilch, Cnoll, 
 Konig, Martins, and Klein. The first named died within a 
 fortnight of his arrival; the second greatly injured the Mission 
 by his worldly spirit and dissolute behaviour ; whilst the third 
 subsequently entered the service of the Nawab of Arcot. Of 
 the Moravian missionaries who carried on their quiet, unassum- 
 ing ministry in the " Garden of the Brethren " at Tranquebar 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 347 
 
 (1759-1804), one, Dr. Betschler, contributed no small sum by 
 his medical practice to the support of his colleagues. Carey's 
 first colleague was a surgeon, Dr. Thomas, who, however, despite 
 much goodwill, by his rash conduct and constant falling into 
 debt proved more of a hindrance than a help to Carey's work. 
 The farther we advance into the nineteenth century the greater 
 number of men do we meet with who were, in the modern sense 
 of the word, medical missionaries — that is, men who placed their 
 medical skill at the service of the missionary enterprise and 
 who sought to use it as an instrument in the saving of souls. 
 But there was as yet no clear perception of the methods of 
 working to be followed nor of the particular tasks devolving 
 upon medical labour as a special branch of missionary organi- 
 sation. The first and perhaps most distinguished of these early 
 practitioners was Dr. John Scudder, who was sent out by the 
 American Baptists to North Ceylon in 1819, and who, until his 
 return to North America in 1854,^ toiled with undaunted 
 enthusiasm in the Jaffna district of Ceylon, in the district of 
 Madura, in the neighbourhood of Madras, and in and around 
 Arcot, preaching and healing — a true pioneer, especially of the 
 Arcot Mission. At this time the American Board was far 
 ahead of all other societies working in India in the sending out 
 of thoroughly trained medical men. In North Ceylon it had 
 Dr. Nathan Ward (183 3-1 847) and the ardent and able Dr. 
 Samuel Green (from 1 847 onwards) ; in Madura, Dr. Steele 
 (i 837-1 842), Dr. Charles Sheldon (i 849-1 856), Dr. Lord 
 (1853-1867); and in the Arcot district, working together with 
 his father, Dr. Henry Scudder (from 1851). The London 
 Missionary Society endeavoured to begin medical work in its 
 South Travancore Mission ; but the first man to be sent out, 
 Dr. Ramsay (i 838-1 842), threw up his work and retired, and 
 the second. Dr. Leitch (i 852-1 854), was drowned whilst bathing. 
 Better known are two missionaries sent out by the American 
 Baptists, Dr. Otis Bachelor, an American who went out in 1840, 
 and an Englishman, Dr. Williamson ; the one worked for long 
 years in the Balasore and Midnapur districts of Western Bengal, 
 the other at the river stations in Eastern Bengal. In 1858, 
 however, there were only seven fully qualified medical mission- 
 aries in the whole of India. 
 
 The twenty-five years succeeding the Mutiny (i 857-1 882) is 
 the period during which the real foundation of this work was 
 laid. But even during those years medical mission work was 
 conducted on a very small scale ; at the end of the period there 
 were only twenty-eight medical missionaries in the field. At 
 first their work was of only one type. The London Missionary 
 
 1 He died in 1S55. 
 
348 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Society again took up, with boundless energy and a splendid 
 staff of agents, the frequently interrupted work in South 
 Travancore. Dr. Lowe (i 861-1868), Dr. Thomson (i 873-1 884), 
 and Dr. Sargood Fry (i 883-1 892) made their hospital station 
 at Neyoor the centre of a vast activity (embracing fifteen sub- 
 hospitals and dispensaries) and a model institution of its kind. 
 At the same time they were bound by ties of close sympathy 
 and fellowship to the Medical Missionary Society of Edinburgh 
 (founded in 1843), the secretaries and leading spirits of which 
 were successively two Neyoor doctors, Drs. Lowe (1868- 1892) 
 and Fry (from 1892). 
 
 Through their united efforts general recognition, especially in 
 Scotch missionary circles, was won for the watchword of the 
 Edinburgh Society, " Preach and Heal," and medical missions, 
 justifying themselves by the examples of Christ's miracles of 
 healing, took rank along with evangelistic and educational mis- 
 sions. Two considerations were, and are still, skilfully advanced 
 to strengthen this position. The practice of the credulous and 
 ignorant quack doctors of India, the so-called hakims, is every- 
 where overgrown with heathenish superstitions ; it takes its root 
 in superstition, and seeks to impress superstitious fancies upon 
 the minds of the people. By the introduction of a rational 
 treatment of the sick, especially when this is accompanied by 
 illuminating and convincing preaching, a crushing blow has 
 been struck at superstition. In the second place, missionaries 
 are bound to make it a matter of conscience with their converts 
 to renounce once and for all their hakims, and in times of sick- 
 ness to apply solely to doctors who have received a scientific 
 training. To set limitations of this nature would be as 
 impracticable as it is unjust unless the missionary societies 
 were also to undertake that a sufficient number of trustworthy 
 doctors should be forthcoming. 
 
 These ideas took root especially in the Scotch missions, which 
 now take the lead in this department. The new mission of the 
 United Presbyterians in Rajputana was richly supplied with 
 medical men from the very beginning, among them being 
 splendid men like Dr. Shoolbred, Dr. Colin Valentine, and 
 others. Nearly every mission station became a centre for 
 medical work and was equipped with a hospital: 1862, Beawar ; 
 1873, Ajmer and Nazirabad ; 1877, Udaipur ; and somewhat later 
 (1885), Jodhpur. Valentine's medical skill opened the closed 
 doors of the state and city of Jodhpur (1866) and Valentine 
 himself was made Physician to the Maharajah (till 1874). The 
 Scotch P"rce Church (which united with the United Presby- 
 terians in the year 1900) shared the same views, and began 
 slowly to equip all its great Indian stations with hospitals 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 349 
 
 and medical missionaries : Madras (Royapurum, a women's 
 hospital), 1857; Pachamba, 1871 ; Tundi, 1889; Chakai, 1890 — the 
 three Santal stations ; Thana, near Bombay, 1877 ; Nagpur, 1886 ; 
 Bhandara, 1888; Wardha, 1895; Jalna, 1890; Kulna, on the 
 Hooghly, 1894; Walajabad, 1889; and Conjeeveram, 1903. In 
 each case the date denotes the year when the hospitals at 
 the various stations were opened ; medical missionary work 
 generally started considerably earlier. Also the English 
 Presbyterians, who stand in close relationship to the Free 
 Church of Scotland, followed the latter's example at their one 
 Indian station of Rampur Bauleah in Bengal (1878. The 
 hospital was opened in 1894). But beyond this comparatively 
 small circle the new department was only extended, for the 
 time being, sporadically ; and although the Scotch views found 
 inspired and eloquent exponents, yet more sober onlookers 
 discovered many weak spots ; so that through these arguments 
 alone medical missions would scarcely have won general 
 approbation and recognition. The necessary apparatus is 
 cumbersome and expensive. To lead up to the Healer of Souls 
 by way of medical treatment is after all a roundabout method, 
 and roundabout methods ought only to be adopted when direct 
 methods have proved to be failures. The conviction is every- 
 where gaining ground that nothing should be given in charity, 
 because it easily does more harm than good. Gratuitous 
 medical assistance on a large scale, however, may easily partake 
 of the character of charity, especially when it benefits such as 
 are not altogether penniless ; and no means has been discovered 
 whereby adequate payment for medical treatment may be 
 levied. Nevertheless, the benefits conferred by this almost 
 universally gratuitous medical attendance are for the heathen 
 such a convincing and illuminating object-lesson of the Religion 
 of Love that in every part of the country we find hospitals 
 similar to those already referred to being erected even in our 
 own day. We will here merely mention that the Basle Mission- 
 ary Society has begun medical work at Calicut (1885) under 
 the direction of Dr. Liebendorfer, at Betigeri, and at a number 
 of dispensaries. 
 
 The renaissance of medical missions dates from the time 
 when two new and important branches of this particular work 
 were developed on a large scale — about 1882. Ever since the 
 time when, as a result of the rapid increase in the number 
 of women missionaries, special interest has been directed to 
 mission work amongst women, the great need of these latter, 
 particularly in times of sickness, has lain heavily on the hearts 
 of all lovers of missions. Medical aid was difficult for men to 
 obtain, but it was practically non-existent, because of caste and 
 
3 50 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the zenana system, for their wives and daughters. And the 
 more women missionaries penetrated into the hidden world of 
 the- zenanas the more awful were the pictures they painted of 
 the dire distress and neglect reigning therein. As the zenanas 
 were closed against the hakims as well as against the mission- 
 ary doctor, there arose one far-resounding cry that met with a 
 speedy response : " We must have lady doctors." The modest 
 beginnings of this kind of work date from two decades earlier. 
 It was in i860 that the American Episcopal Methodists com- 
 missioned their first female medical missionary, Dr. Clara Swain, 
 to start work in North India (though she had been in the 
 country since 1857). In 1867 that active woman missionary, 
 Mrs. Winter, of the S.P.G., commenced her service of love 
 amongst the sick women of Delhi. At Hoshangabad a small 
 women's hospital was erected by the Quakers in 1878. Then 
 at one stroke two great zenana societies determined to launch 
 out on a large scale into this new department of work : the 
 Zenana Bible and Medical Mission and the Church of England 
 Zenana Missionary Society. The first of these had already 
 made a start with a dispensary for women in 1876; not only 
 was this developed in 1887 to a great hospital, but further large 
 women's hospitals were built in Benares, Ajuthia (Ajodhya), and 
 Patna. The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 
 which had been founded in 1880, devoted special attention from 
 the first to the new department of service, particularly in the 
 Punjab ; there women's hospitals were erected in quick succession 
 at Amritsar (1880), Jandiala (1882; complete hospital opened 
 1894), and Peshawar (1884). Further, at several branch 
 stations lying within a more or less accessible distance from 
 Amritsar, branch hospitals with dispensaries for women and 
 children were founded, and at Krishnagar in Bengal (1889) and 
 at Bangalore in the Mysore (i 891) immense hospitals for women 
 were erected. The C.E.Z.M.S. alone has now twelve lady 
 doctors in its service. By the work of these societies two great 
 examples had been given, and other societies were not slow to 
 follow suit, especially as it was impossible to deny the weight 
 of the arguments which had led to the new departure. 
 
 The missionary societies, however, were soon to find eager 
 rivals in this particular field. The misery and distress of 
 women in cases of sickness was so appalling that the noble 
 consort of Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy (i 884-1 888), determined to 
 make a great effort towards applying some measure of relief 
 In 1886 she founded a "National Association for supplying 
 Medical Aid to the Women of India." Before this Association 
 she placed three distinct goals : the training of competent 
 women doctors, nurses, and midwives ; the erection of hospitals 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 351 
 
 for women ; and the private nursing of the sick in the zenanas. 
 But in the pursuit of these objects she forbade, in the most 
 emphatic fashion, the carrying on of any religious propaganda 
 whatsoever, and most of all of any Christian propaganda. The 
 Empress Victoria bestowed her patronage upon the Association. 
 Funds poured in from all quarters. One old lady bequeathed 
 ;^i 2,000, a Parsi ;^io,ooo, a Muhammadan publisher at 
 Lucknow ;^I500, and so on. The first annual report an- 
 nounced receipts of over ^^"23,000. 
 
 To-day the Association maintains seventy - four women 
 doctors and fifty-two assistants, whilst two hundred and fifty- 
 seven women students are enabled by its funds to attend various 
 medical colleges. At first missionaries used every effort to 
 transform the religious indifference of so influential an organisa- 
 tion into something more favourable to Christianity. But it 
 was all in vain ; and they have come to see, in an association 
 carried on solely from humanitarian motives, an ally in the work 
 of sweeping away the unutterable misery of the women of India. 
 
 The Church Missionary Society took a new departure. Its 
 Kashmir Mission had been commenced in 1864 by a medical 
 missionary, Dr. Elmslie, a most capable and devoted man, who 
 was cut down in the heyday of his service in 1872. He and his 
 successors. Dr. Maxwell (1873-1875), Dr. Downes (1875-1881), 
 and the brothers Neve (since 1881 and 1886 respectively), 
 succeeded in the most marvellous way, not only in overcoming 
 the opposition of the Maharajah but also in preparing a 
 way for the messengers of the gospel amongst a fanatic 
 and indolent people. The Church Missionary Society deter- 
 mined to use the same key which had been so successfully 
 used in Kashmir to unlock other hearts specially set against its 
 workers ; and first of all in the Punjab, which, owing to the 
 preponderance of a fanatical Muhammadan population on the 
 one hand, and on the other, to the wild, cruel Afghan and Baluchi 
 tribes on the west and north-west frontiers, presented a problem 
 of exceptional difficulty. Here they laid down a chain of 
 stations largely, if not exclusively, for medical work : in 1868 at 
 Tank, in 1879 at Dera Ghazi Khan, in 1882 at Amritsar, in 
 1885 at Multan, in 1886 at Quetta (the newly annexed Frontier 
 district), in 1890 at Dera Ismail Khan, and in 1894 at Bannu. 
 A hospital was also opened in 1897 a-t Peshawar, where medical 
 work had already been in progress for a considerable period ; 
 to the men's hospital at Srinagar in Kashmir was added one for 
 women at Islamabad, in the immediate neighbourhood, in 1902 ; 
 and at Kangra and Kotgarh doctors were stationed in order 
 that tours both for purposes of preaching and of healing might 
 be made among the far-stretching spurs of the Himalayas. 
 
35 2 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Large gifts of money encouraged the Society to continue to 
 extend its work in this direction : the Dera Ismail Khan 
 hospital was built with a legacy of ;^I500 left by Maxwell 
 Gordon, the missionary who fell at Kandahar ; and the 
 women's hospital at Islamabad was erected by the famous 
 traveller, Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop, in memory of her deceased 
 husband, Dr. John Bishop, and then handed over to the 
 Society.^ 
 
 This third development, the employment of medical missions 
 as a means for obtaining a foothold in especially difficult 
 districts, has found many supporters, more particularly in the 
 Punjab. The American Presbyterians had already sent out 
 medical missionaries on preaching and healing tours, e.g. Dr. 
 John Newton in 1858, Dr. Carleton in 1881, and Dr. C. W. 
 Forman in 1883. Later they laid emphasis on providing 
 medical assistance for women and children, and established 
 hospitals for women at Ambala and Jagraon (near Ludhiana). 
 The American United Presbyterians opened women's hospitals 
 at Jhelum (1890) and Sialkot (1887), whilst the Church of 
 Scotland, working hand in hand with the last-named Society, 
 erected similar hospitals at Chamba (1894), Gujarat (1895), 
 and Jalalpur (1899). The Punjab thus became the favourite 
 territory of medical missions. 
 
 From the first, medical missionaries have been much occupied 
 in training a competent and well-equipped staff of native 
 helpers. They need them as much for every fresh extension of 
 the work when new hospitals and dispensaries are founded as 
 for the ordinary care of the sick and in the dispensing of 
 medicines. And this need has been as urgent in women's 
 hospitals as in those for men. Down to about 1880 efforts were 
 made to get over the difficulty by forming teaching classes of 
 the young men or young women, as the case might be, who 
 had the requisite amount of previous preparation: from 1847 
 onwards Dr. Grant of Jaffna (American Board), Miss Hewlett 
 of Amritsar (C.E.Z.M.S.), and Dr. Dease of Bareilly (American 
 
 ^ The munificent gifts received from Hindus and Muhammadans alike for medical 
 missions are one of the most encouraging features of Indian missionary history and 
 an incontrovertible proof of the real gratitude of the Indian people. When the 
 American Baptist hospital for men at Madura required rebuilding, the Hindus, with 
 the Prince of Ramnad at their head, collected the whole of the funds required, some 
 44,000 rupees. The hospital at Udaipur, a beautiful building containing fifty beds, 
 was a present from the Prince of Mewar to the United Free Church of Scotland. And 
 the handsome new hospital at Jodhpur in Rajputana was erected largely at the cost 
 of the Rajah, who earlier had been one of the bitterest opponents of missions. 
 Towards the United P'ree Church of Scotland's hospital at Kulna, Bengal, a subscrip- 
 tion of 20,500 rupees was given by the Government in 1904. At Nasik the Brahmans 
 have presented the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission with a hospital. Other cases 
 might be cited. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 353 
 
 Episcopal Methodist) all conducted such classes.^ But progress 
 in this direction was only possible on territory not absolutely 
 British, such as South Travancore ; the Neyoor hospital of the 
 L.M.S. has shown itself to be a most successful nursery for the 
 training of a body of native doctors. In British India private 
 medical training of this sort has been more and more rendered 
 impossible by the increasing definite qualifications demanded of 
 medical practitioners and by the regulation that they must pass 
 certain examinations and produce certain testimonials. The 
 missionaries have had to make up their minds in such cases to 
 let those young Christians who were suitable take a regular 
 course of study. In order to help the young men to make the 
 most of their studies, a Scotch missionary, Dr. Colin Valentine, 
 gave up his post as Physician to the Maharajah of Jaipur and 
 founded at Agra in 1881 the Agra Medical Missionary Training 
 Institute, There he trained young medical students entrusted 
 to his care by quite a number of missionary societies, and 
 supplemented their studies at the Government School of 
 Medicine in Agra by means of scientific and practical courses. 
 By systematic evangelical instruction he trained them at the 
 same time for mission work.^ The experiment was made of 
 sending women students also to the Government Schools; but 
 the contact with heathen men students had such bad effects that 
 it soon became evident that capable Indian lady doctors and 
 dispensers, possessed of spiritual as well as mental qualifications 
 for missionary work, could only be trained in a special medical 
 school for Christian women students. Two English women 
 medical missionaries, Dr. Edith Brown and Miss Greenfield, 
 took the far-reaching project in hand, and in the autumn of 
 1894 the "North India School of Medicine for Christian 
 Women " was founded at Ludhiana in the Punjab.^ The 
 Charlotte Hospital (which had been founded by the enterprising 
 Miss Greenfield in 1889) was the first training school; when 
 this did not suffice, a second, the Memorial Hospital, was put 
 up in 1898. Four women medical missionaries and one fully 
 qualified nurse compose the teaching faculty. Three courses 
 were arranged : the full medical course of five years with a 
 special Government examination and an obligatory examination 
 in obstetrics ; another course for the training of women 
 dispensers also closing with a Government examination ; and a 
 
 ^ Dr. Grant also worked at the translation of technical medical terms into Tamil 
 and the composition of text-books in the various branches of medicine for the instruc- 
 tion of his own students. 
 
 - When Dr. Valentine was obliged to return to Scotland in 1901, he was suc- 
 ceeded by a Scotch medical missionary, Dr. William Huntley. 
 
 ^ From another quarter but for similar reasons the Lady Lyall Medical School for 
 Females had been established at Lucknow in 1SS7. 
 
 23 
 
354 HISTORY OF LNDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 simpler course on sick nursing. The number of students has 
 increased rapidly ; there are now forty of them. After some 
 reluctance the Punjab University has consented to affiliate this 
 unique institution, provided certain additional development takes 
 place. A medical faculty recognised by the State, and founded 
 by five fairly young medical women, is certainly one of the most 
 original developments in the whole history of Indian missions ! 
 
 In the year 1882, at the beginning of the period which we 
 have characterised as the golden age of medical missions, 
 there were 28 medical missionaries in India. By 1895 this 
 number had increased to 140, who had 168 native helpers 
 and in whose care there were some 166 hospitals and dis- 
 pensaries. At the beginning of the year 1905 there were 
 280 medical missionaries of both sexes. We have three almost 
 contemporaneous and valuable sketches of medical mission 
 work.^ According to them, there were in India in 1905 ninety 
 missionary hospitals and at least 212 dispensaries, more than 
 a quarter of the total being in the Punjab. In the year chosen 
 by Dennis for his investigations, 22,503 patients were treated 
 for a longer or shorter period in the hospitals, and 842,600 other 
 patients in the dispensaries, whither two and a half million 
 visits were paid by the doctors. The widest activity is that 
 in connection with the Neyoor Hospital (L.M.S.) in South 
 Travancore, which has 13 branch hospitals and dispen- 
 saries. Dr. Arthur Fells, the Director, has a staff of 33 
 assistants, almost all of them trained by himself in the different 
 hospitals. 1641 hospital patients, 84,859 dispensary patients 
 (making 135,557 visits), and 4225 home patients receive treat- 
 ment during the year. 
 
 A rival of the Neyoor Hospital is the great unattached 
 medical mission at Ranaghat in Bengal, which was founded in 
 1893 by James Monro, a former Commissioner of the London 
 Police, and is still largely maintained and directed by him and 
 by members of his family.^ It embraces two hospitals and four 
 dispensaries, and in 1899 treated 490 patients in the hospitals 
 and 33,114 in the dispensaries (with 77,465 medical visits). 
 Another famous institution is that of the Church Missionary 
 Society at Srinagar, directed by the brothers Neve and 
 containing 150 beds. During the year it gives medical aid 
 to 1525 patients in the hospital and to 18,973 (with 41,629 
 medical visits) in its dispensaries. In connection with the St. 
 
 ^ The Missionary Tables for 1900, Dennis's Centennial Survey (p. 193), and 
 Dr. Feldmann's diligent monograph, Die drztliche Mission tinter IJeiden und 
 JMohaminedanern (Basle, 1905). Cf. also the Quarterly Paper of the Edinburgh 
 Medical Mission Society (1905, p. 84). 
 
 ^ On January ist, 1906, Monro made over his entire mission to the Church 
 Missionary Society. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 355 
 
 Catherine's Hospital for Women at Amritsar (C.E.Z.M.S.) no less 
 than 12,000 women were attended at their houses during- con- 
 finement in the year 1899. These few figures may suffice to 
 give some idea of the stream of Christian benevolence which 
 is pouring forth from these fountain-heads of love across the 
 parched, arid, and loveless tracts of heathenism.^ 
 
 8. Missions to Lepers 
 
 Work amongst lepers is closely related to medical missions. 
 Its chief distinction, omitting others of lesser importance, is 
 that it is for the most part carried on not by doctors but by 
 ordinary men and women missionaries. Leprosy is very 
 common in India. It is true the census of 1890 recorded only 
 114,239 lepers and that of 1901 only 90,000; but the number 
 is really far higher than this, because the Hindus conceal 
 leprosy as long as possible, in fear of its consequences — 
 ostracism from caste, etc. Although there are districts in India 
 in which leprosy is found only sporadically, there are others 
 where it occurs with fearful frequency. In the very thickly 
 populated province of Bengal five in every thousand are lepers ; 
 in the districts of Bankura and Birbhum there are as many as 
 36'3 per thousand ! And yet it is only during the last few 
 years that any even general precautions have been taken 
 against this scourge. What was done here and there for lepers, 
 whether locally or by private initiative, we shall recount later 
 when we come to speak of the work of the Leper Mission. 
 Only since 1890 has the Government seriously faced the 
 question. In 1890 and 1891 a Leprosy Commission went all 
 over the country at the request of the Government. Its 
 recommendations resulted in the Leprosy Act of 1896, which 
 is applicable to the entire country. Its regulations — which as 
 a matter of fact are only partly adopted in the provinces and 
 protected states — distinguish between the lepers who are 
 capable of following a trade and those who are habitual 
 beggars. These latter are to be gathered in asylums to be 
 built in every part of the country, and to be interned at the 
 expense of the State, especially when they are found exposing 
 their wounds in order to excite charity. The lepers able to 
 exercise a trade are allowed to take their choice as to whether 
 they enter these asylums or not. But if they elect to remain 
 outside, certain restrictions are laid upon their movements : 
 they may not avail themselves of any public means of con- 
 
 ' Medical missionaries in India have since 1895 had an organ of tlieir own, 
 Medical Missions in India, which is published at Ajmer. 
 
3 56 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 veyance — railway, steamboat, tram-car ; they may not draw 
 water from public fountains and tanks, nor wash themselves in 
 the same ; they may not engage in any business connected in 
 any way with food or articles of clothing, etc. etc. If they 
 continue to break these rules, they must either leave the part of 
 the country in which they live or enter the nearest refuge. It 
 is yet too early to say whether this law will stand and whether 
 it is really practicable. It has been most vigorously applied in 
 Bengal, where it was most needed. 
 
 The immeasurable misery of the unhappy lepers has 
 awakened a large and enduring amount of Christian sympathy. 
 Evangelical missions have done a great deal to alleviate their 
 sufferings. We can understand how it was that so late a 
 beginning was made in this direction. All that the first three- 
 quarters of the nineteenth century has to show as regards mission- 
 ary work among lepers may be regarded simply as a groping after 
 a commencement. The immediate duties of missions, preach- 
 ing and the formation of native churches, at first engaged all 
 available resources. And even if the real number of lepers be 
 considerably more than is officially stated in the census, they 
 still compose, in comparison with the teeming millions of the 
 population, only a very tiny section, which seldom mounts, except 
 in specially pestilential districts, to more than one per thousand. 
 
 The pioneer of this kind of work was once again William 
 Carey, who founded the first refuge for lepers in Calcutta.^ He 
 was succeeded by one of Gossner's missionaries, the self-denying 
 and enthusiastic Dr. Ribbentrop of Chapra, who not only 
 founded an asylum but who also, personally and in the most 
 self-sacrificing way, took his share in tending the lepers, binding 
 up their wounds and burying their dead. Then towards the 
 end of the forties Captain, later General, Sir J. Ramsay founded 
 the Lepers' Hospital in Almora, the oldest of those missionary 
 asylums still in existence, and in 1850 he placed the direction 
 of it in the hands of Budden, a zealous missionary belonging 
 to the London Missionary Society. And then, finally, the 
 American Presbyterians and the Church of Scotland built a 
 couple of small leper hospitals at Sabathu and Ambala, These 
 last proved to be the starting-point of a much greater enterprise 
 by means of which missions to lepers were to justify^ their 
 existence and their right to become an independent branch of 
 evangelical missionary work. This enterprise is connected with 
 the name of Wellesley Bailey, an Irish missionary. 
 
 Bailey had gone out to India in 1868, and was engaged in 
 secular employment.^ This, however, he resigned the following 
 
 ^ Smith, William Carey, p. 256. 
 
 ^ Cf. Carson, The Story of the Mission to Lepers, 2nd edition. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 357 
 
 year and entered the missionary service, working first under 
 the American Presbyterians and then under the Church of 
 Scotland in the Punjab. His attention was early directed 
 to the lepers by Dr. J. Morrison, and owing to his interest 
 in them, the charge of a small leper hospital at Ambala was 
 entrusted to him. During a series of preaching tours through 
 the entire north-western region of India, he came to realise, 
 with eyes that had been opened by his term of hospital work 
 at Ambala, the unspeakable misery of the lepers, who, cast 
 out by their relatives and neighbours, were forced to eke out 
 a wretched existence as beggars by the roadside, in a constant 
 condition of starvation and filth, without comfort or hope in 
 the world. 
 
 In 1874 he returned to his native country, Ireland, on 
 furlough. Here his heart overflowed. Again and again, in 
 speeches and addresses, he depicted the wretchedness of the 
 lepers of India and pleaded that he might have a yearly 
 sum of £2,0 for their relief. He obtained more than he asked 
 for. His little pamphlet Lepers in India called public attention 
 to the matter. A " Mission to Lepers in India " was founded, 
 and Bailey was able to return to the field with a sum of 
 ^600. The new Society resolved from the beginning to send 
 out no missionaries of its own but to work in conjunction 
 with existing organisations, and through them to found new 
 leper hospitals or to support and provide for the spiritual 
 side of the work in those already erected. Applications for 
 aid from the funds of the Society soon began to pour in 
 from the different members of Bailey's wide circle of acquaint- 
 ance. The hospitals at Sabathu, Almora, and Ambala were 
 enlarged and a new one built by the Church of Scotland at 
 Chamba. The Society developed in proportion as the need 
 for it became clearer. In 1878 it was able to constitute itself 
 as a Missionary Society proper, and ten years later, on a 
 thorough revision of its statutes being made, a proper 
 committee was appointed, thus giving it, so to speak, a right 
 to a voice in all general missionary councils. The then 
 Vicereine of India, Lady Dufferin, became its patroness, the 
 Archbishop of Dublin its President, the pick of the missionary 
 secretaries of the great societies its Vice-Presidents, and 
 Bailey himself Superintendent of the whole work. 
 
 One cannot but admire the power of adaptation possessed 
 by this Society in everywhere accommodating itself to existing 
 circumstances and in establishing itself at the least possible 
 expense. Care for the lepers and the erection of refuges for 
 them is primarily, as was officially recognised by the already 
 cited Leper Act of 1896, a duty of the State and of the 
 
358 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 municipal and provincial authorities. As the Government 
 provision for such cases is, however, still lamentably insufficient, 
 the missionary societies are compelled, at any rate for the 
 present, to take a large share in this labour of love. " The 
 Mission to Lepers" assists in the erection of refuges, often 
 with considerable sums ; it also builds such refuges on its 
 own account, on condition that the Society whose interests 
 lie nearest to that particular place agrees to assume all 
 responsibilities of management ; and it also pays for the cost 
 of the inmates' board in all the leper refuges connected with 
 it. Besides this, it endeavours to make use of every existing 
 or newly erected refuge for the purpose of exercising its own 
 special task, the supplying of the lepers with the Word of 
 God. But with what a gradation and variety of refuges for 
 lepers the Society finds itself confronted ! We give only a 
 few typical instances, as a visit to them all would carry us 
 too far and would prove fatiguing because of its uniformity. 
 
 Half a mile from the famous pilgrim shrine of Baidyanath 
 or Ueogarh in Bengal there is a public leper asylum consisting 
 of three well-built houses; a "bhisti" draws water, a "mehtar" 
 attends to the cleaning^ — these are the sole domestics on the 
 place. There is no " chaukidar " (overseer) to insist on fair 
 play, no doctor or medical assistant binds up their wounds : 
 both sexes live together just as they like. Their daily rations 
 consist of one pound of rice, two and a half ounces of lentils, 
 a little salt, and — a halfpenny! If they need anything more 
 they must beg for it. We can easily understand that when 
 Miss Adams (American Methodist Episcopal Church) and 
 her Bible woman visited this place they had the greatest 
 difficulty in the world in making themselves heard amid these 
 ragged hordes of beggars. 
 
 At Sehore in Bhopal in July 1891 the Begam - ordered all 
 lepers to be interned in a barn-like building situated on some 
 rising ground. A "chaukidar" was appointed to watch them 
 as if they were prisoners. Men and women were lodged in 
 two separate courtyards. Members of the various religious 
 denominations were permitted to take an interest in the 
 lepers or not, just as they pleased. Was it any wonder that 
 
 ^ It is well known that each caste will only perform its own particular duties. 
 We may here mention that the series of pictures given in the text are selected 
 from varying periods within the last twenty years. The Mission to Lepers has 
 gone so enthusiastically to work in the erection and improvement of leper asylums 
 that most of the modest shelters put up at the beginning have been replaced within 
 a few years by substantial buildings. 
 
 2 It should be stated that even this provision was furnished at the entreaty of 
 Colonel Wylic, the truly Christian Political Agent for Central Bhopal, and that 
 some of the funds for the building were obtained by Colonel Wylie from England. 
 — Translator's Note. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 359 
 
 Charles D. Terrell, a Quaker missionary, should at first be 
 looked on with suspicion and his efforts to get a catechist 
 appointed to the asylum be regarded from a standpoint we 
 may almost characterise as hostile? But Christian love and 
 patience gained the day ; Mi'. Terrell succeeded in winning 
 the confidence of the unfortunate lepers, and soon a small 
 nucleus of Christians was formed. 
 
 The town of Saharanpur in the United Provinces built 
 an asylum for male lepers and another for females on opposite 
 sides of the town. But what a state they were in ! The houses 
 v/ere almost in ruins, there was no "bhisti" to carry water, 
 ro " mehtar " to clean the premises, no doctor for the sick ; and as 
 tae two rupees eight annas paid monthly for their board was 
 inadequate, the lepers were forced to go out and beg to avoid 
 starvation. Under such circumstances it was a splendid thing 
 when a competent teacher, a leper himself from the Almora 
 Hospital, came to establish law and order at the asylum for 
 rr.en — himself the only Christian amongst them — and to reveal 
 lijht and comfort to them from the Word of God. And 
 Er. Forman (American Presbyterian) did quite right in 
 endeavouring to gain complete missionary control for the two 
 asylums. 
 
 The Baba Laikhan settlement in the same neighbourhood 
 was far better fitted up ; although it only gave shelter to forty 
 lepers, it had a complete staff: a native doctor, a " dhobi " (washer 
 cf linen), a"mali" (gardener), a "bhisti,"a "mehtar," and a''bania" 
 (buyer in). Each leper received sufficient aid : three rupees 
 eight annas per mensem, and in addition vegetables and 
 clothing materials. There was a drug store and even a tiny 
 mosque — thirty-two of the patients being Muhammadans. 
 In this case, however, there was a responsible governing body 
 and Christian work could be undertaken systematically. Rev. 
 Dr. Martin (American United Presbyterian) was its Super- 
 intendent, and a Christian teacher and his wife visited the 
 asylum daily. 
 
 Far larger was the leper settlement under Government 
 inspection near Tarn Taran in the Punjab. Here the wise step 
 had been taken of erecting three separate rows of buildings for 
 Hindus, Muhammadans, and Christians. At first the native 
 doctor refused to hear of admitting Christians to the settlement. 
 They were either denied admission or told to renounce their 
 faith. They had the courage to answer, " We will not and we 
 cannot deny Christ," and in the end their application was 
 accepted. The Edinburgh Society concerned itself with these 
 Christian lepers and built them a small church ; Rev. E. Guilford 
 (C.M.S.) regularly taught them from the Word of God. In 1903 
 
36o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 the Punjab Government made over the entire leper colony to 
 the direction of the Edinburgh Society, and enabled it to 
 entirely rebuild the settlement. The imposing new leper hospital 
 was inaugurated on April 9th, 1904. 
 
 A model institution is that erected by the Municipality of 
 Bombay at IMatunga in 1891. It was highly necessary at 
 Bombay. The lepers had taken possession of the Dharmsala 
 Poorhouse, and here in filth and immorality they led a comfortless 
 beggar's life. Just at the right time, however, a Parsi, Sir 
 Dinshaw Petit, placed a considerable sum at the disposal of the 
 city authorities for the express purpose of erecting a municipal 
 leper settlement. This asylum soon contained three hundred 
 lepers. It is well ventilated, serviceably fitted up with seven siov 
 wards and a hospital for advanced cases ; a native doctor is in 
 charge. The Leper Mission found, however, considerable diffi- 
 culties in commencing operations here. The Muhammadans 
 had their mosque, the Hindus a temple, the Roman Catholics 
 a chapel in which mass is regularly celebrated by a priest. But 
 there was only one Protestant leper in the place. Happily lie 
 was an old teacher, and as the Christians held together he was 
 able to start a school for the children. A Bible woman attached 
 to the American Board goes every week to minister to the women 
 and to strengthen the hands of the teacher in his difficult calling. 
 
 Far more beautiful for situation — one might almost call it 
 ideal were it not for the desperate condition of those for whom 
 it is built — is the Maclaren Settlement for Lepers in Dehra Du:i 
 at the foot of the Himalayas. Three Government doctors 
 deserve the credit for the erection and equipment of this 
 model institution ; it bears the name of the first of them. It 
 is an extensive settlement with pretty, airy wooden houses, 
 Behind there stretches a large garden with all kinds of fruit 
 trees and vegetables ; the paths and flower-beds are bordered 
 with tea shrubs which in some cases rise to the height of 
 hedges ; across the various watercourses are thrown handsome 
 stone bridges. And the centre of the whole establishment is a 
 neat, spotless kitchen, in which a faithful leper catechist daily 
 conducts morning prayers and later in the day a school. 
 Ullmann, a missionary of the American Presbyterians, took a 
 deep interest in the patients and, as long as his strength 
 allowed, conducted worship amongst them every Sabbath. 
 Pastor Bose, a native minister who has the special pastoral 
 charge of the institution, was to be seen almost daily in the 
 huts of the lepers. It was no wonder that 55 of the 
 135 patients came over to Christianity. Such a settlement 
 as this is only possible under European management. For 
 many years an unhappy English leper, a true Christian, 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 361 
 
 Mr. Jackson, superintended the establishment. He had been 
 taught by his own heavy cross to devote himself to tireless 
 service amongst his miserable fellow-sufferers.^ 
 
 More uniform and regular in its essential features is the 
 work in the leper asylums which the Mission to Lepers has 
 either built or which it maintains in connection with other 
 missionary societies. It has always followed the principle of 
 never beginning operations where a missionary society is not 
 already at work or does not declare itself prepared to assume 
 responsibility for the management of an asylum. Nevertheless, 
 we find in these missionary establishments almost the same 
 diversity and almost the same gradation from a primitive refuge 
 to a fully equipped institution as in the buildings owned by the 
 Government. Here too we will give a few sketches at random 
 of the development of various well-known mission settlements 
 during the last twenty years. All these settlements have rapidly 
 reached their present stage of development from the most 
 modest beginnings. 
 
 Two native preachers, the brothers Scott (American Reformed 
 Presbyterians), discovered in a mango grove near Muzaffarnagar 
 in the United Provinces a crowd of lepers, who had pur- 
 chased the right to settle in the grove though nobody took 
 any interest in them ; they maintained a miserable existence 
 by begging. The Mission to Lepers began first of all with 
 an attempt to win their confidence by making them a regular 
 monetary contribution and by appointing a medical assistant 
 to bind up their wounds. This was a preparation for the 
 Christian instruction which the Scotts and one of their native 
 helpers imparted to them in the mango grove until it was 
 possible to build at least hastily constructed huts. 
 
 At the above-mentioned shrine of Baidyanath, where there 
 were always large numbers of lounging beggar lepers, Miss 
 Adams (American Methodist Episcopalian) had built with her 
 own hands two small clay huts under the shadow of a large 
 tree, in order to provide scanty accommodation for half a dozen 
 sick folk. She provided her charges with food and clothing, and 
 with her Bible woman preached to them faithfully and convinc- 
 ingly the Word of God. Here we have at any rate the germ of 
 a missionary settlement for lepers. 
 
 In the Colaba district, to the south of Bombay, a native 
 pastor, J. Bawa (American Board), was deeply touched by the 
 misery of the lepers, and with the help of sums of money 
 received from the Mission to Lepers he constructed two small 
 asylums at Pui and Poladpur. They were certainly of the very 
 simplest character. At Pui a single tile-covered house, standing 
 ^ In the end he succumbed to his malady there. 
 
362 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 in a two-acre plot surrounded by neither fence nor wall, con- 
 tained a double row of five rooms opening on to verandahs. 
 One side was for men, the other for women. Weak as they 
 were, the poor lepers planted and sowed a portion of the land 
 surrounding the house. Bawa looked after his patients most 
 faithfully ; they received all that was necessary for their support, 
 and the gospel was preached to them with power. 
 
 At other places no such small beginning could be made. 
 At Chandkuri and Raipur in the Central Provinces, within 
 the sphere of the German Evangelical Missionary Society of 
 America, the famine of the year 1897 had brought hundreds 
 of lepers to the verge of starvation. At Raipur, 167 lepers and 
 40 untainted children were lodged in a temporary almshouse, 
 and received a scanty modicum of subsistence at the hands of 
 the Government. But the Government did not want them 
 permanently on its hands, and they were just on the point of 
 being turned out upon the roads when the Mission to Lepers 
 declared its readiness to take over the entire almshouse with 
 its 207 inmates and to change it into a missionary shelter. The 
 Mission could not conscientiously allow so many invalids to 
 slide back into a condition of vagabondage. Under the 
 energetic superintendence of German American missionaries 
 (particularly of Rev. Carl Nottrott) this refuge rapidly grew 
 into one of the largest and best directed in India; according to 
 the latest statistics (December 1905) it contained 430 patients. 
 
 These were missionary settlements in the making ; they 
 bore the marks of the storm and stress of necessity upon them. 
 But such settlements wear a very different appearance when 
 they have developed under careful superintendence. Almora 
 and Chandag (Pithora) both lie in Kumaon on the slopes of 
 the Himalayas. Both are old leper settlements : Almora was as 
 long ago as 1850 under the direction of the L.M.S., Pithora 
 Chandag 1 has been under the Methodist Episcopalians since 
 1 886. Both have an interesting history behind them. At Almora 
 — the settlement is two miles away from the mission station of 
 the same name — the word preached by Budden and his assist- 
 ants seemed for long years to make no impression. The 
 miserable lepers were dull and obstinate — not until 1864 was the 
 first convert, Musuwa, baptized ; but he was a real gem, was 
 soundly converted, and worked with tireless energy for his 
 Master until his death (1891). With his faithful assistance and 
 that of a splendid " chaukidar," Bond, a strong and healthy 
 Christian atmosphere was gradually created in the asylum. Of 
 the 113 present inmates, 109 are Christians. The settlement 
 
 1 The Methodist Episcopalian mission station is called Pithora or Pithoragarh ; 
 the leper settlement is at Chandag, some two and a half miles distant. 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 363 
 
 gives the impression of a Christian hamlet in the most exquisite 
 natural surroundings. Coming across from Almora mission 
 station, one passes through the entrance gate up a shady path 
 bordered on both sides with grass plots and leading to the church. 
 The houses of the lepers lie in ranks along the edge of the hill, 
 and behind them tower up on every side the snow-capped peaks 
 of the Himalayas. 
 
 Chandag was founded by that passionately devoted mis- 
 sionary Rev. Mr. Kirk in 1886; he himself went to live in the 
 settlement in order to dwell amongst the lepers, to relieve 
 their wounds and to bury their dead. Unfortunately, he died 
 that same year, 1886, just as he was collecting money for the 
 erection of a little church in his settlement. For a long time 
 Miss Mary Reed,^ a noble and devoted American lady 
 missionary, lived and worked here. She herself became tainted 
 with leprosy, and for ten years past she has devoted herself to 
 attendance on her comrades in suffering. Under her splendid 
 management the refuge has grown and prospered. Sixty-four 
 of its eighty-one inmates have become Christians. A native 
 pastor and three lady missionaries from Pithora stood by her 
 in dark days. 
 
 ^ The history of Mary Reed is so charming that we must at least say a few words 
 about it here. Born in the village of Lowell in Ohio, Miss Reed was early converted 
 to God, and soon felt a desire to enter the missionary service. In the year 1884 she 
 went out to Cawnpore as a teacher under the Episcopal Methodists and worked there 
 for four years. As her health was far from satisfactory, she was transferred to the 
 Girls' Institution at Gonda, where the climate is less oppressive ; but in 1890 she 
 was compelled to return to North America with shattered health. She entered a 
 Deaconesses' Hospital belonging to her Church at Cincinnati and underwent several 
 operations, without, however, receiving any benefit. Nobody could tell what was the 
 matter with her. Then there came a day in April 1891, as she lay alone on her 
 sick bed, when the thought struck her: "What if her malady should be the early 
 stages of leprosy?" She did not dare to give the thought expression, but asked for 
 medical books in order to gain information. The more she read the more convinced 
 she became. She sent for \he Secretary of the Women's Missionary Society to which 
 she belonged and imparted to her her fears. Through her agency she was examined 
 by several of the most distinguished medical men of New York and London, and 
 the result was that her conjectures were confirmed on all hands — she was a leper. 
 She did not dare to inform her parents of the dreadful fact, and only a favourite 
 sister shared her secret ; but her mind was at once made up. During a hoHday 
 excursion to Pithora she had visited the Leper Hospital at Chandag, and she resolved 
 to go there. She would pass the rest of her life among her companions in tribula- 
 tion : possibly she might be able to be of some use to them. Without bidding fare- 
 well to anybody, she hastened back to India as fast as possible ; only when she 
 arrived in Bombay did she write full particulars to her parents. From that time she 
 lived in quiet retirement at the Chandag Refuge. Much prayer has been offered for 
 her and God has helped her in a marvellous fashion. All outward signs of leprosy 
 have disappeared ; she is as active and cheerful as a healthy person. She has learnt 
 to bow in humility under the chastening hand of God and to bear her heavy cross 
 with submission. Quite recently a number of doctors have agreed that, as far as 
 human knowledge goes, Mary Reed is healed of her leprosy ... a most exceptional 
 case. Nevertheless, she has remained in that neighbourhood, the mountainous 
 regions of Kumaon, and is now working among the people on the Tibetan frontier. 
 
364 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Still larger and showing a more elaborate development is 
 the settlement founded in 1888 at Purulia, a station belonging 
 to Gossner's Mission ; it is the model settlement of the Mission to 
 Lepers. Rev. Mr. Uffmann, the missionary there, was led to take 
 up this particular branch of missionary work by a strange disposi- 
 tion of providence : his eldest daughter, whom he had sent home 
 to Germany to be educated, caught leprosy in Berlin, and after 
 great sufferings died there in the Elizabeth Hospital. Since 
 then he has entirely dedicated himself to work among the lepers, 
 and his Society has left him a free hand in the matter. Under 
 his splendid direction the refuge at Purulia developed in less 
 than 10 years into a large village of 524 inhabitants. There 
 are 9 men's houses with 28 rooms, and 8 women's houses 
 with 25 rooms ; every room is 14 feet square and intended 
 for 4 persons. Besides this, there are houses for the native 
 doctor, whom the Mission to Lepers has installed to give 
 special attention to the sick, for the " chaukidar," one for 
 boys, another for girls, a shop, a school, a chapel, a drug 
 store, with special accommodation for those who are very ill. 
 Here, too, they had the joy of finding the first convert in the 
 establishment, Shidam Banwar (christened Christaram, or " Rest 
 in Christ"), a zealous and faithful man ; he died triumphant in 
 the faith in 1890. His example also paved the way in this 
 settlement for many who afterwards came to Christ ; 478 of 
 the 639 who were received in the settlement during the years 
 1 888-1 895 accepted Christianity, and the present inmates are 
 almost all Christians. It is the largest leper settlement in 
 India. At the present time it has 716 inmates; and the 
 Government of Bengal has erected a state settlement in affilia- 
 tion therewith which is likewise under the direction of the 
 Gossner Missionary Society. Also with regard to arrangements 
 for children who have become tainted with the disease and 
 those who are still free from it, the Purulia settlement is a 
 model of its kind. 
 
 The refuges under the Mission to Lepers are as far as possible 
 managed on uniform principles. The lepers find their own food 
 and receive 5s. a month. The houses are one storey high ; they 
 are generally constructed for only two or four persons, so that 
 every appearance of barrack life may be avoided. For every 
 refuge some reliable Christian is chosen as " chaukidar," a 
 leprous catechist as teacher, and if possible a few tried Christians 
 to serve as leaders amongst the rest and to create a dominating 
 Christian atmosphere in the settlement. Every superintending 
 officer and teacher, whether European or native, is required to 
 suppress all appearance of aversion or disgust in his intercourse 
 with the lepers, and to enter their huts and mingle freely with 
 
MISSIONARY ORGANISATION 365 
 
 them. As far as possible, efforts are made to keep the sexes 
 separate ; this, however, is by no means so stringently enforced 
 nowadays as formerly, since it has been proved that marriages 
 between lepers are sterile, and that leprosy in itself is not 
 hereditary. The separation of tainted and healthy children is 
 of greater importance than that of the sexes. It is a binding 
 principle of the Mission to Lepers that in connection with all the 
 larger settlements, homes for these untainted children shall be 
 provided. 
 
 To-day Mr. Bailey is able to testify with thankfulness to God 
 that not one of the numerous European and native helpers who 
 have been appointed to serve in these settlements has ever con- 
 tracted the appalling disease. 
 
 According to statistics drawn up by the author in the year 
 1899, evangelical missions in India were at that time working 
 in forty-two settlements — inclusive of two at Colombo and 
 Mandalay — of which sixteen belonged to the Edinburgh 
 Mission to Lepers and eight to other missionary societies that 
 were, however, supported by the Mission to Lepers. In the years 
 that have elapsed since then the number has increased consider- 
 ably. The newest list of stations belonging to the Mission to 
 Lepers reckons forty-two settlements as belonging to the 
 Edinburgh Society and eighteen as being supported by it ; in 
 these, besides 500 children who are free from disease, 5225 
 lepers are being cared for, and of this number 2779 ^^^ Christians. 
 This great work of Christian love, the self-sacrifice and devotion 
 of which even the heathen appreciate and admire, is one of the 
 stars in the crown of a great and noble band of men and women 
 who are united together in imitation of Him who came to seek 
 and to save that which was lost. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE LEAVEN AT WORK 
 
 The deeply religious nature of the Hindus is emphatically 
 demonstrated by the fact that religious movements have sprung 
 up in India during every century. Many of them have been 
 evoked by the yawning gulf which separates popular idolatry 
 from the sublime philosophy of the theological schools : on the 
 one hand, there is the crass, gross, and, among the lowest classes, 
 absolutely fetich-like worship of idols, lingams, sacred trees, 
 stones, rivers, ponds, and so forth ; on the other, the subtle 
 hypercriticism and the hair-splitting dialectic niceties of the 
 Vedanta and Sankhya systems of philosophy or of the systems 
 of logic. In view of these extremes, thoughtful spirits have from 
 time to time been moved to attempt the reformation of the 
 profane tendency of popular idolatry, and have founded divers 
 sects. Other religious movements have been the outcome of 
 contact with other systems of religion. Long centuries after 
 Buddhism, originally a product of Indian soil, had been expelled, 
 its influence remained potent in India, simply because its great 
 fundamental ideas blossomed forth into new sectarian forma- 
 tions, most of them having a decided anti-caste bias. Islam, 
 which has pressed forward from the North- West in an ever- 
 conquering march from the eleventh century down to the present 
 day, has by no means won all its victories at the sword's point. 
 Among a race so naturally receptive to religious influence as the 
 Hindus, it was not long before more or less important attempts 
 were in progress to blend Hindu conceptions of truth with 
 those of the new religion, and especially with the latter's pro- 
 nounced monotheism. The Kabirpanthi sect in the eastern 
 provinces of India and the Sikhism of Guru Nanak in the 
 Punjab are historically the two most remarkable composites of 
 this kind. 
 
 It was inevitable, therefore, that contact with the Christian 
 civilisation of the West, which has been growing in intensity 
 decade by decade, notably as the consequence of the increas- 
 ingly popular preaching and educational work of the agents of 
 
 366 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 367 
 
 Christianity, should result in movements of a like nature 
 amongst the Hindu population. No Hindu can attend a 
 mission school without having his faith deeply shaken, even if 
 he do not lose it altogether. Their orthodox ideas about 
 astronomy are simply ridiculous ; their history pullulates with 
 kings thirty feet high, who reign for 30,000 years ; their 
 geography tells of Milk Seas, Butter Seas, Ghi Seas, and so on. 
 All that is at once swept away for a youth who has acquired 
 the veriest rudiments of European education. But a Hindu is 
 as a rule far too religious by nature to rest satisfied for long 
 with this negative attitude. Contact with the new civilisation 
 and the new religion sets in motion amongst the people a 
 process of intellectual fermentation. This is not exclusively 
 owing to the influence of missions, but they undoubtedly have 
 a considerable share in calling forth and stimulating such a 
 process, and missionaries feel the liveliest interest in its 
 development and final outcome. 
 
 Now there have been minor movements to be attributed 
 more or less directly to Christian influences observable in 
 almost every part of India during the nineteenth century, and 
 we meet them again and again in the course of a tour through 
 certain mission districts : such are the sects of the Satnamis in 
 Central India, the Daud Birsa movement in Chota Nagpur, the 
 followers of Chet Ram in the Punjab, and many others. But 
 whilst these local sect formations are for the most part a 
 confused and arbitrary blending of Christianity and Hinduism, 
 with perhaps the addition of various Muhammadan ideas, our 
 attention is at once directed to a movement with which many 
 of the most distinguished and highly educated personalities of 
 Bengal are associated, the Brahmo Samaj. 
 
 I. The Brahmo Samaj 
 
 Its founder was the noble, learned, and deeply religious 
 Ram Mohan Roy.^ Born of a Brahman family in the 
 Murshidabad district in 1774, and splendidly educated at the 
 Muhammadan College at Patna and in the very citadel of 
 Hinduism at Benares, his heart, which had been early in life 
 repelled from the idolatry of the people, was ever engaged in 
 a passionate quest for truth and for deeper religious knowledge. 
 He went to Tibet to study Buddhism at its fountain-head and 
 to study its oldest literary documents. He learnt Greek and 
 Hebrew that he might read the Bible in the original tongues, 
 and the sublime conceptions of that holy Book exercised a 
 
 1 G. Smith, Alexander Duff, popular edition, p. 59 ei seq. 
 
368 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 deep and permanent influence upon him. After many years' 
 faithful service of the English as a civil servant, during which 
 time his incorruptible character won him the respect of a wide 
 circle of acquaintance, he retired in 1814 to Calcutta, in order 
 to devote the rest of his life to religious research and pious 
 meditation. Once every week he gathered the Brahmans and 
 all of an inquiring mind about him in one of the busiest streets 
 of the city and discussed with them the worthlessness of religion 
 as practised by the great masses of the people, the decadence 
 of Hindu society, and the necessity for reform throughout 
 Hinduism. Of course he met with opposition and made many 
 bitter enemies. Gradually, however, he gathered a circle of 
 real friends and eager pupils anxious and ready to learn. 
 These he formed into a reform association which went by various 
 names: in 1814 the " Atmaya Sabha," in 1816 the " Brahmaya 
 Sabha," in 1820 the "Unitarian Church," in 1828 the " Vedantist 
 Society," and since 1830 the " Brahmo Samaj " or " Theistic 
 Society." He had no thought of becoming a Christian, nor did 
 he cease to wear his Brahmanical knot up to his death. He 
 believed, on the contrary, that he had rediscovered Christian 
 monotheism in the Vedas (the Upanishads), and intended, much 
 as Luther had done with regard to the Romish Church, to cleanse 
 Hinduism from the multiple accretions of latter-day religious 
 degeneracy and to lead it back to the pristine beauty of the 
 Vedic religion. As a social reformer he took an important 
 part in the agitation against the suttee, and showed how that 
 this cruel custom was not founded on the Vedas. He is also 
 to be remembered as one of the first of Dr. Duff's supporters 
 when that fiery young Scot founded his college in 1830. Soon 
 after that Roy went with a political mission to England, where 
 he excited widespread interest both by his perfect education 
 and his friendly attitude towards Christianity. But he could 
 not stand the English climate, and died in Bristol on Sep- 
 tember 27th, 1833, confessing even on his death-bed his belief 
 in the divinity of the mission of Jesus and in His miracles. 
 He has been called the "Erasmus of India"; certainly he 
 rendered true Erasmus-like service by the anonymous publica- 
 tion in 1820 of his work The Precepts of Jesus, the Way to Peace 
 and Happiness. He ordained in the statutes of the Brahmo 
 Samaj that no idol should ever be placed in its assembly-room 
 nor sacrifice be offered up in connection therewith. But, how- 
 ever susceptible he may have been to Christian influences, he 
 remained to the very end a great way off from the decisive 
 step of embracing the Christian faith. The number of his 
 actual disciples was always small. At his death there were said 
 to be twelve of them. His most remarkable capture was Adams, 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 369 
 
 a Baptist missionary — the " second fallen Adam," as he was 
 jestingly called in Calcutta. 
 
 After Roy's death the movement threatened to come to a 
 standstill. It was then that Srimat Maharishi Debendranath 
 Tagara (generally written " Tagore ") identified himself with it 
 and became its leader. Born at Calcutta in 18 17, he had lost 
 all faith in the Hindu gods whilst still a student at the Hindu 
 College, but had never come under the influence of Christian 
 missionaries. Hungering and thirsting for religious enlighten- 
 ment, he had founded in 1838 a " Tatwabodhini Sabha," or 
 " Truth-teaching Society." This society he amalgamated with 
 the Brahmo Samaj in 1841. Like Roy, he thought he had found 
 pure divine monotheism in the Vedas. This error had been 
 both possible and excusable so long as the Vedas were little 
 known and not studied scientifically. But now Dr. Duff chal- 
 lenged the Brahmo Samaj to a great literary contest, started in 
 the pages of his own journal. The Calcutta Review, to thoroughly 
 investigate and abandon this untenable thesis. Dr. Tagore 
 himself entered upon long and minute research in connection 
 with the affair, and was honourable enough to admit his error, 
 and therewith to relinquish the divine authority of the Vedas 
 (1850). He then sought to lay as the foundations of his Society 
 intuitive perception, or, to express it differently, perception of 
 the religious understanding; and he studied with equal dili- 
 gence the European philosophers, Kant, Fichte, Cousin, Spencer, 
 and Mill, and the religious writings of the Hindus and the 
 Sufis. The only book he neglected was the Bible. With all 
 this, however, he was conservative to the backbone, clung with 
 sincere affection to India's great past, and strove to remain a 
 true Hindu to the end. 
 
 Since 1858, however, this conservative current has been 
 stemmed by a strongly progressive tendency, mainly under the 
 influence of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen, who joined the Brahmo 
 Samaj in 1858. Born in 1838 of wealthy and orthodox parents 
 of the Vaidya caste, he was educated as a boy in all the traditions 
 of Vaishnavite piety. Whilst a student of Presidency College, 
 however, he lost all confidence in Hinduism, and submitted him- 
 self to Christian influences, being a regular attender for years at 
 a Bible class conducted by one of the Government chaplains. 
 Although he never thoroughly studied the ancient sacred 
 literature of his own country, the Bible early in life became to 
 him the first of books, and concerning it he penned the follow- 
 ing enthusiastic words : " It is to me a home of blessing to 
 which I may ever retire, it is the Word of Life in which I find 
 the echo of all that I consider to be the most precious treasure 
 of my life." 
 24 
 
370 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Even as a schoolboy he had visions of John the Baptist, of 
 Christ, and of Paul ; and after long struggle, and much prayer, 
 a flood of inward illumination was vouchsafed to him, bringing 
 him peace. In the Samaj he soon won a position of influence, 
 being consecrated acharya, or priest, in 1862, and later appointed 
 secretary of the Society. He pressed tempestously forward 
 and endeavoured to translate his new convictions into practice ; 
 he broke caste, and demanded social reforms, the remarriage of 
 widows, the abolition of child marriage, the complete renuncia- 
 tion of all idolatrous and superstitious customs, etc. In 1865 
 this led to strife and a breach between him and the more 
 timid and more prudent Tagore. The Samaj was rent asunder, 
 and those who were of a more conservative way of thinking rallied 
 round Debendranath Tagore and called themselves the Adi 
 Samaj (the " original " Samaj). This association has since been 
 of little importance. Tagore lived to a ripe old age at Calcutta, 
 and died on January 19th, 1905, highly respected as the 
 " Maharishi," the " great sage," of India. Scarcely any outside 
 his own family and caste were members of his Samaj. 
 
 The progressive party founded under Sen's inspired and 
 inspiring leadership " the Progressive Brahmo Samaj " ; and for 
 two decades the new Society was in the forefront of public 
 interest. Its somewhat chequered history is chiefly notable for 
 the public lectures given by Chunder Sen from time to time 
 in the largest halls of Calcutta before audiences of the greatest 
 brilliance and distinction. As he was a master of convincing, 
 dazzling, and profusely illustrated speech, his great lectures soon 
 became events which excited the keenest interest in every part 
 of India, and even far beyond its confines. The first famous 
 lecture was that delivered on May 5th, 1866, entitled "Jesus 
 Christ, Europe, and Asia." It marks his nearest approach to 
 Christianity.^ In it he said : " Mankind groaned beneath the 
 mortal disease of sin, and was on the verge of the precipice of 
 death. Some remedy was absolutely indispensable if it were to 
 be cured. Jesus was a necessity of His age. . . . Jesus, Who 
 by His wisdom illumined a dark world, Who rescued it by His 
 power. Whose blood has wrought such miracles for eighteen 
 hundred years, was He not lifted high above the rest of man- 
 kind ! Blessed Jesus ! Deathless Child of God ! He lived and 
 died for the world ! May the world learn to honour Him." 
 
 This discourse everywhere received the greatest attention 
 both from Hindus and Christians. The missionaries were full 
 of hope; they thought that the baptism of Sen and his 
 followers could now be only a question of time. But Sen's 
 speech had been delivered extempore, and in the heat of the 
 
 ^ The entire lecture is given in the Basic Miss. Mag. for 1867, p. 3 et scq. 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 371 
 
 moment he had gone somewhat farther than he intended. On 
 September 28th of the same year he gave a second lecture on 
 " Great Men," in which he placed Christ on a level with Moses, 
 Muhammad, Buddha, Confucius, and others ; he praised these 
 benefactors of the race in exuberant language, but simply gave 
 Christ the first place among them. Such was the state of 
 affairs when in 1870 Sen visited England. He received a most 
 extraordinary welcome, and his journey through the country was 
 like a long triumphal procession ; many pulpits were thrown 
 open to him, and these by no means Unitarian pulpits only. 
 He conducted himself in this remarkable situation with the true 
 dexterity of an Oriental, but any attempt to make him a 
 member of any particular Christian sect he cleverly foiled. In 
 a speech delivered at Birmingham he was able to declare quite 
 dispassionately : " Since my arrival in England I find myself 
 ceaselessly surrounded by different religious denominations, all 
 the members of which maintain they are Christians. I seem to 
 be in a great fair. Each sect is like a little stall at which one 
 particular kind of Christianity is offered for sale. As I pass from 
 booth to booth, and from stall to stall, each sect attempts to 
 waylay me, and offers me its interpretation of the Bible and 
 its particular articles of Christian faith." Whilst two of his 
 companions were baptized in England, Chunder Sen returned 
 to India unbaptized and unattached. Since then he never 
 again felt tempted to become a Christian. Once more in his 
 native land, his first efforts were devoted to social reform. He 
 succeeded in passing a special marriage law for the adherents of 
 the Brahmo Samaj (the Brahmo Marriage Act, III. 1872), by 
 which no maiden belonging to the Society might marry under 
 the age of fourteen, and no youth under the age of sixteen. In 
 his teaching he adopted more and more the whole circle of 
 Christian terminology, using even such expressions as atonement, 
 the Trinity, the Holy Ghost, and the like ; he desired, however, 
 to see all the sacred writings of all peoples recognised as 
 equal sources of religious knowledge, from which intuition 
 alone could sift out the truth by means of meditation and 
 prayer. 
 
 On April 9th, 1879, he delivered his most brilliant address: 
 " India asks, who is Christ? " In the course of it, he said : " Is 
 not a new and conquering civilisation gaining ground in the 
 hearts of our people, day by day, and year by year ? Are not 
 Christian ideas and institutions striking deeper roots in the soil 
 of India continually? Yes, the onward surging waves of a 
 mighty revolution are flooding the country, and foreign innova- 
 tions and reforms are winning their way to India's inmost heart 
 in the name of Christ. Hence it is that our fatherland is asking 
 
372 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 earnestly and frankly, ' Who is this Christ ? ' Who rules 
 India? You are mistaken when you think Lord Lytton does 
 with his cabinet, or Sir Frederick Haine with his military genius. 
 It is neither diplomacy nor the bayonet which sways our hearts. 
 Armies never won the heart of a nation. And you cannot deny 
 that our hearts are touched, are won, are overwhelmed by a 
 higher power. And that power is Christ. Christ rules British 
 India, not the British Government. . . . None but Jesus, none 
 but Jesus, none, I say, but Jesus, ever deserved this bright, this 
 precious diadem, India, and Jesus shall have it. . . . My Christ, 
 my sweet Christ, the most lustrous Jewel of my heart, the bridal 
 Adornment of my soul ! For twenty long years have I loved Him 
 in my miserable heart. I have found, though ofttimes persecuted, 
 though ofttimes soiled by the world, I have ever found sweetness 
 and joy unspeakable in my Master Jesus. He, the Bridegroom, 
 Cometh among you. May India adorn herself as a bride in her 
 glittering apparel, that she may be ready to meet Him." In this 
 connection he paid such a beautiful testimony to the work of the 
 missionaries, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of 
 repeating it: "If praise is due to any army for subjugating 
 India, it is the army of the missionaries, with their General, 
 Christ, at their head. Their self-devotion and self-denial, their 
 love for men, their love to God, their faithfulness to the truth, 
 all have found, and will continue to find, a deep place in the 
 o-ratitude of our fellow-countrymen. It would be a work of 
 supererogation did I attempt to bestow words of praise on such 
 tried friends and benefactors of our land. They have brought 
 us Christ. They have given us the high code of Christian 
 ethics, and their teaching and example have influenced and won 
 thousands of Hindus in secret, who have not yet openly 
 avowed themselves Christians. God's blessing and India's 
 thanks will therefore ever accompany men like these, men of 
 character and veracity, men who on many occasions have been 
 found ready to give up their life for their testimony to the 
 truth." 
 
 We are astounded and confounded to hear such lofty and 
 beautiful words from the lips of a Hindu. Still they only 
 represent one side of the shield ; in the same lecture Chunder 
 Sen continued : " But we must admit that England has brought 
 us a Western Christ, an Englishman with English manners and 
 customs, with the temperament and mind of an Englishman. 
 Before such a one the Hindus draw back in alarm, and say : 
 ' Who is this revolutionary reformer, who seeks to undermine 
 the very foundations of our native social order, who brings us 
 a foreign faith and a civilisation wholly incompatible with 
 Oriental sentiments and ideas ? Why should we submit our- 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 373 
 
 selves to one of a different nationality ? Why should we bow 
 before the prophet of another race ? ' It is an undeniable fact 
 that hundreds and thousands even of the educated classes of 
 this country view with moral repugnance the form of foreign 
 Christianity which is forcing its way into Hindu society and 
 threatening to overturn it. And it is this discrepancy, doubt- 
 less, which hinders the progress of the true spirit of Christianity 
 in our midst. . . . But why must the Hindus go to England to 
 learn to know Jesus Christ? Is not the land of Christ's birth 
 nearer to India than to England ? Were not Jesus and His 
 apostles more nearly related to the Indian races and ways of 
 living than to the English ? " And here we come to the root of 
 the whole matter : it is an Oriental Christ whom Chunder Sen 
 would reveal, a Christ who, like some Indian yogi, has emptied 
 Himself, in contemplation and meditation, that He may be filled 
 with the Godhead. " The life of Christ is the ideal life for a 
 Hindu. The idea of redemption and entire absorption in the 
 Godhead is one of the ideas of the Vedantic philosophy uni- 
 versally recognised throughout India. And through this one 
 idea Christ will conquer India." 
 
 Whilst India and the world were still wondering what 
 concrete conception Chunder Sen had of this Oriental Christ, 
 the eloquent orator unfortunately proved himself to be but a 
 very weak Hindu. He betrothed {i.e., according to Indian 
 custom, married), in direct contradiction to the law he had 
 carried through in 1872, his thirteen-year-old daughter with the 
 seventeen-year-old Prince (later Maharajah) of Cooch Behar. 
 This gross inconsistency on the part of their leader brought 
 matters to a crisis in the Brahmo Samaj ; 425 of its 514 
 members renounced Chunder Sen's authority, and founded on 
 a democratic basis and on the Presbyterian model the Sadharan 
 Samaj (the " constitutional " or "general" Samaj). Under the 
 direction of Dr. A. M. Bose, a famous and learned solicitor, of 
 his brother, and of the eloquent pundit. Dr. Sivanath Shastri, 
 this Society has continued to exist up to the present time. Its 
 confession of faith, in nine articles, lays strong emphasis on a 
 monotheistic God, teaches the immortality of the soul, and 
 states that true redemption consists in forsaking sin with 
 unfeigned repentance, and that union with God in wisdom, 
 goodness, and holiness, is true salvation. 
 
 But however small at first the remnant still adhering to 
 Chunder Sen, public interest and the potentiality for further 
 development were on his side ; and unfortunately this develop- 
 ment took place during the next five years with painfully 
 surprising rapidity. Chunder Sen gave himself out as the 
 founder of a new world-embracing religion. In a speech made 
 
374 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 on January 23rd, 1881, which for high-flown eloquence and 
 clashing of phrases put all his previous accomplishments into 
 the shade, he imparted this wonderful discovery to the world. 
 "Asia, thou mother of so many institutions for the healing of 
 the nations, thou hast again brought a child to the birth, whose 
 natal day shall be to many an anniversary of great joy. Sweet 
 Angel of the East, Evangelist of Heaven, sent from above with 
 a new gospel, thou camest to us clad in the most splendid and 
 glittering array and adorned with the most precious jewels, such 
 as the East only can boast. Thou camest accompanied by the 
 sounding of bells and the echoing of conches. Sacred Light, 
 we greet thee, we kiss thee, we yearn in humility to impart this 
 day to these our brethren here assembled, the good tidings 
 which thou hast brought us from heaven," etc. And what is 
 this new gospel ? A melting down of all previous religions to 
 a unity nobler than them all, by one new prophet Keshub 
 Chunder Sen, who claimed for himself divine inspiration, and 
 who on that account allowed himself to be worshipped as god. 
 The " New Dispensation " was the name Sen gave to his new 
 religion. He at once got to work to arrange the details of 
 religious worship for his followers, by introducing the sacred 
 rites of all other religions ; from Christianity he borrowed 
 baptism, confirmation, the Holy Communion, and much besides. 
 The way he mimicked our most sacred rites is almost blas- 
 phemous. It will be enough if we reproduce the description 
 given by an eye-witness of his first celebration of Holy Com- 
 munion on March 6th, 1881. "The Hindu apostles of Christ, 
 as they call themselves, assembled after prayer in the refectory, 
 and seated themselves upon the bare floor, their legs folded 
 beneath them. Rice was then brought in on a silver trencher, 
 and water in a small jug. The officiating priest read the 
 dedicatory words from Luke xxii., and then prayed : ' O Holy 
 Spirit, touch this rice and this water and change their coarse 
 substance into sanctifying spiritual forces, in order that, as we 
 eat, we may assimilate them in our bodies just as the flesh and 
 blood of all saints is assimilated in Jesus Christ. Satisfy the 
 hunger and thirst of our souls with the rice and the water 
 placed before us by Thee. Make us strong through the power 
 of Christ, and nourish us with holy living.' After the rice and 
 the water had been consecrated, they were handed round to 
 those present in small portions. They ate and drank solemnly 
 and praised God, the God of the prophets and the saints." 
 Sen soon slipped farther and farther down the steep descent. 
 He introduced the old Indian" Soma" sacrifice, and the 
 " Arati " rite ; he arranged sacred dances — three concentric 
 circles of boys, youths, and men, clad in yellow, white, and 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 375 
 
 brown, respectively moved round in opposite directions, keeping 
 time with the music while Sen sang: "Jesus dances, Moses 
 dances, Buddha dances, all sing in honour of the Only One," 
 and so on. All kinds of pearls and precious stones were ex- 
 hibited to represent the truths scattered abroad in the most 
 widely differing religions. By a trick these were all united to 
 form one exquisite ornament. There were other conjuring 
 tricks of the same sort. Sen himself on one occasion called his 
 religion a "sacred jugglery." And his ever active imagination 
 was continually discovering new dogmas, the latest of these 
 being that of the " Motherhood of God." He was just pre- 
 paring for a great voyage round the world, in order to gain 
 universal recognition for the new religion, when he died, after a 
 short illness, on January 8th, 1884, being only forty-five years 
 old. We can only read the life story of this brilliantly gifted 
 and deeply religious character with sadness. Scarcely any other 
 Hindu has spoken such glorious words concerning Jesus Christ, 
 or been more deeply impressed by His life and words — and yet 
 in what hopeless confusion did his life end ? Shipwrecked 
 through presumption and vanity, he was as a moth whose 
 wings were destroyed at the flame of the divinity of Christ, 
 simply because in his folly and self-will he neither could nor 
 would abstain from fluttering around it in his own fashion ; he 
 is also an example of the mighty fermentation the Spirit of 
 Christ is producing in the minds of the Hindus. 
 
 Even over the open grave of the master fresh disputes 
 broke out between his disciples, as also in the apostolic councils 
 Sen had constituted. Whether " the master who had passed 
 into heaven " should be accorded divine honours, whether his 
 pulpit should ever again be occupied, and so on, were the 
 questions which now unsettled all the small souls connected 
 with the movement. A true friend and relation of Sen's, the 
 noble Babu Pratap Chunder Mozumdar {b. 1840), assumed the 
 direction of the Samaj, as far as it was possible to assume 
 direction of aspirations so arbitrary and so widely differing in 
 their objects. Mozumdar was also a man who had experienced 
 much of the glory of Jesus, from his early years. " Jesus dwelt 
 consciously in my heart like some deeply cherished love of 
 earth ; He was its rest, its innermost consolation, its unmerited 
 treasure, in whose riches I was fully invited to share. From 
 that day onwards Jesus was a reality to me, One upon Whom I 
 could lean for support." Mozumdar wanted to be a real Christ's 
 man, but not as one belonging to any of the innumerable 
 Christian denominations. He was, however, of too gentle and 
 retiring a spirit to hold the Society together with a firm hand. 
 Since no Scriptures were recognised as its basis, and no con- 
 
376 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 fession of faith as its norm, every member chose out just those 
 parts of all other religions which were most pleasing to himself 
 " Young people, and even little boys and girls," says a well- 
 informed article in one of the numbers of Nobo Bharat (a news- 
 paper) for 1887, " may now be found in the very front ranks of 
 the critics. It is therefore a difficult matter to know whose 
 opinion is authoritative in the Samaj, and whose is not. . . . 
 Each man is an authority unto himself" Mozumdar bore the 
 burden of leadership until the year 1902 ; after having held 
 himself quite aloof from the meetings of the Samaj for several 
 years previously, he took farewell both of the Society and the 
 world in an elegiac composition in the spring of 1902, and 
 retired to Kurseong, near Darjeeling, in the Himalayas, to end 
 his days in peace and quiet meditation. He died at Calcutta 
 on May 27th, 1905. 
 
 It is difficult to arrive at any conclusive judgment as to the 
 importance of the Brahmo Samaj movement. No one has seen 
 more clearly nor admitted more honourably than the reflective 
 Mozumdar the superficial character of its entire operations. 
 " We go one way, our old relatives another, and our women yet 
 another ; and notwithstanding all these conflicting forces, the 
 Indian home remains in pretty much the same condition as it 
 occupied before the Government opened its schools and colleges. 
 Our educated young men discuss their projects of reform in 
 debating clubs ; but as soon as they get home, they carefully 
 put their progressive views in their pockets, and bend their 
 necks beneath the yoke of custom as their ancestors before 
 them. They belong to the nineteenth century, but their homes 
 to the first century, and the distance between the two they 
 must discount every day as they walk from the college to the 
 home." If moral backbone was not precisely the forte of 
 Chunder Sen, the majority of the Society lacked it even more, 
 and at times bitter outcries are raised against the lack of 
 character and the want of discipline in these Samajes. And 
 yet we ought not to ignore the fact that they have exercised 
 salutary influences in many different directions. The majority 
 of their members have renounced completely the popular 
 idolatry and all its depraving customs. Sen made great efforts 
 to ameliorate the condition of the weaker sex; as early as 1865 
 he admitted women to his religious gatherings, and founded for 
 them an association of their own, the Brahmika Samaj. The 
 author was told in Calcutta that the education given to female 
 members of Samaj families was of an exceptionally high order. 
 They compose the majority of the students at the famous 
 Bethune College ; it is by no means a rare occurrence for Samaj 
 girls to attain the age of eighteen or twenty before they marry. 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 377 
 
 The Samajes carry on an extensive propaganda throughout the 
 whole of India, support travelling preachers and agents, printing- 
 houses, newspapers, magazines, and book warehouses. By these 
 means their reforming ideas are sent forth into every quarter, 
 and perform at least some measure of pioneer work for the 
 missionaries. 
 
 But this must not be our final word on these Societies. Ever 
 since the entrance into the arena of Duff's all-quickening 
 personality in 1830, down to somewhere about the year 1870, 
 there were at least a few converts to Christianity every year 
 from the most distinguished and talented families in Bengal, 
 the Banerjeas, the Chatterjeas, the Dutts, etc., and a great 
 religious movement had thus arisen amongst the intellectual 
 aristocracy of the country. But after Chunder Sen's dazzling 
 appearance on the scene this movement came to a complete 
 standstill, and conversions from the first circles of society in 
 Calcutta have been of the most infrequent occurrence. The 
 Samajes have built up, as it were, a wall of demarcation between 
 missions and the Hindu aristocracy. The reason for this is not 
 far to seek. With the grosser forms of ancient Hinduism these 
 educated classes will have nothing more to do ; but the majority 
 of them lack the strength of character necessary to take the 
 decisive step into the Christian Church. Now here they find, 
 so to speak, a half-way house which just meets their need, a 
 religion they can model according to their taste, in which there 
 is so much said about Christianity and the Bible, and which 
 uses so many of the formula; and expressions of Christian 
 doctrine which they have learnt at school, that in the end 
 they imagine themselves within a Society that is wholly 
 Christian ; and, above everything, no breaking of caste is 
 demanded of them, no sacrifice of home or fortune, no giving 
 up of their accustomed ways of living. It is the perfect 
 religious system for a society of beaux esprits, none of whom 
 possesses much determination of character. And this is also 
 probably the reason why, according to the Census reports, the 
 membership of the Brahmo Samaj has always been extremely 
 small, it being returned in 1881 as 515 adults and 601 children, 
 in 1 891 as having 3051 members in all, and in 1901, about 
 4000. This is likewise the cause, doubtless, that the entire 
 Brahmo Samaj movement has been largely confined to Bengal ; 
 the leavening of the atmosphere of Calcutta with the elements 
 of Anglo-Christian culture, the subtle intellects of the 
 Bengalis, their love for disputation and argument, together 
 with their manifest weakness of character, all tend to foster a 
 religion that makes its main appeal to the intellect and not to 
 the will. 
 
378 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 There are, moreover, no less than fifteen different periodicals, 
 six in English, six in Bengali, one in Hindi, one in Oriya, and 
 one Anglo-Marathi, engaged in the dissemination of these 
 ideas, and their chief organ, the daily Indian Mirror, is one 
 of the most influential newspapers of Calcutta. In the whole 
 of India there are 149 of their local societies, which, however, 
 only possess some 44 places of worship — an ctat major without 
 an army ! 
 
 2. Will o' the Wisps 
 
 At the South India Missionary Conference held at Madras 
 in 1900, Dr. Murdoch, a man who has grown grey in the cause 
 of missions, said on one occasion : " India is the favourite 
 hunting-ground of religious mountebanks, fanatics, and every 
 possible kind of false teacher and quack." There is no doctrine 
 too nonsensical and no pretension too absurd to find credence 
 in India, provided it be advanced in an assumed tone of 
 religious conviction. How heart-rending, however, is the evil 
 wrought by unprincipled adventurers from the Christian West 
 when they exploit this foible of the Indian peoples and make 
 complete fools of them. About the middle of the nineteenth 
 century all kinds of occult sciences of very doubtful worth, such 
 as spiritualism, mesmerism, etc., were extensively cultivated in 
 both Europe and America. A blas6 society, which had lost 
 faith in the simple revelation of the truth of Christianity, felt a 
 new and delightful tickling of the senses in conversing with the 
 spirits of the departed, in acquiring from them a supposed 
 knowledge of the unseen world, and in accomplishing all sorts 
 of miracles by their aid. Furthermore, these credulous enemies 
 of Christianity carried on no slight flirtations with the religions 
 of the East, particularly with Buddhism, which just about that 
 time began to be fashionable in America. Belonging to these 
 occult circles in America was an adventurer. Colonel Olcott ^ by 
 name, who had been in turn an officer in the army, the director 
 of an insurance society, a newspaper editor, and who was 
 withal a man, to say the least, of questionable past — for it is on 
 record that he was imprisoned in America for circulating 
 immoral literature. With him there became associated an 
 extremely cunning adventuress, Madame Blavatsky, the widow 
 of a Russian General, behind whom there also lay an eventful 
 and somewhat dubious past. Colonel Olcott and Madame 
 Blavatsky journeyed to India in 1879 to carry on a propa- 
 ganda of occultism. After a temporary halt at Bombay, 
 
 "^ Basle Miss. Mag., 1885, pp. 272, 357, etc. Ilandmann, Kampf der 
 Geisier, p. 41. 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 379 
 
 they went on to Ceylon, and there Olcott formally professed 
 Buddhism. During the next few years both of them displayed 
 great literary activity on behalf of Buddhism. Olcott wrote a 
 Buddhist catechism, which was translated into many different 
 languages, and of which, so it was asserted, more than 30,000 
 copies were sold ; its standpoint was purely and simply atheistic. 
 For example, the answer to question 112 says in so many words : 
 " For a Buddhist a personal God is nothing more or less than a 
 gigantic shadow, which the imaginations of ignorant men have 
 thrown across the face of the world." At the same time 
 Madame Blavatsky published a work of fifteen hundred pages 
 in two volumes, Isis Unveiled; it has since been proved, 
 however, that a large portion of it consisted of abstracts from a 
 French book, Dogine et Rituel de la haute Magie, written by an 
 ex-priest, Louis Constant (under the nom de guerre of " Eliphas 
 Levy"), and from Donelly's Atlantis — that it was, in fact, a 
 scandalous plagiarism. In 1882 the two adventurers transferred 
 their headquarters to Madras, where they soon developed such 
 extensive activities as to attract the attention of all India. 
 They founded a " Theosophical Society," and published a 
 periodical of their own. The Theosophist, a journal devoted to 
 Oriental philosophy, art, literature, and esoteric arts, such as 
 mesmerism, spiritualism, and other esoteric sciences. They 
 soon had a tremendous following ; even Englishmen of the 
 highest social standing subscribed to their society, and Hindus 
 with a British education were soon in a state bordering on 
 intoxication with regard to the new doctrines. What, then, were 
 the objects Olcott and Blavatsky strove to attain ? According 
 to their official programme the aims of the " Theosophical 
 Society " were threefold : (i) A nucleus was to be formed for a 
 universal brotherhood of man, without distinction of race, creed, 
 or colour ; (2) the study of Aryan and other religions should be 
 encouraged, and their importance pointed out ; (3) the hidden 
 mysteries of nature and the physical powers latent in mankind 
 should be inquired into. As a matter of fact, their endeavours 
 took quite a different form ; the first thing they did was to pay 
 most assiduous court, in a highly mendacious fashion, to the 
 Hindus themselves. True wisdom, they said, did not proceed 
 from the West, it was to be sought in Indian men. In the 
 Orient in the ancient prehistoric sacred writings lay the source 
 of light and wisdom. "You have misunderstood and concealed 
 it. We want to set it again on the beacon tower, and are come 
 to learn from you, and also to prove to you that the old Indian 
 wisdom is in perfect harmony with the results of modern 
 science." Was not this kind of flattery, flung broadcast in 
 every direction, precisely the kind of thing to bewilder and 
 
38o HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 befog weak-willed Hindus? The only pity was that it came 
 from people who were so well known to be Buddhists, as that 
 the priest of the great temple at Tinnevelly, for instance, when 
 Olcott had finished his brilliant speeches upon Hinduism, felt 
 it necessary to have the temple thoroughly purified after his 
 departure ! This exaltation of Hinduism was accompanied by 
 an increasingly venomous hatred of Christianity, and more 
 particularly of missionaries. They wanted " to tear Christianity 
 to shreds." " What Christianity really is is shown by Krupp 
 cannons, by whisky distilleries, by opium ships, and by many 
 other things of that ilk. Its course through the world is one 
 long chain of selfishness, brutality, unrighteousness, and decep- 
 tion. The dogmas of this religion are based upon proofs which 
 are neither historical nor logical : all that is true in them is 
 derived from philosophical writings of antiquity. ... It destroys 
 all morality, and puts an end to all striving after high ideals. It 
 begets hypocrisy, flatters sensuality, and palliates crime." " An 
 expiring superstition " ! And the missionaries are " peaceful 
 hooded snakes," useless, ignorant, idle gluttons who live on the 
 credulity of pious Christians in Europe ; their converts can only 
 be termed " perverts," and so forth. How sweet must all this 
 have sounded in the ears of Hindu society, which had the greatest 
 intellectual difficulty in maintaining its position in face of the 
 attacks made by Christianity and by the superior measure of 
 truth contained therein. If an " academically trained " American 
 officer and a high-born Russian general's widow thought and 
 spoke thus, who could blame the Hindus if in future they refused 
 to hear anything further concerning a decadent religion like Chris- 
 tianity, concerning such very questionable persons as missionaries? 
 The real strength of the movement headed by Olcott and 
 Madame Blavatsky, however, lay in their supposed and pre- 
 tended relations with the spirit world. Madame Blavatsky 
 maintained that at an earlier period she had lived for seven 
 years in the Himalayas, in the most profound solitude, and that 
 she had there sought and found communion with the spirits of 
 great saints of ancient India, with the Rishis and the Mahatmas. 
 In particular, she had engaged in lively intercourse with an old 
 Tibetan saint, Kut Humi Lai Singh, a Mahatma never previously 
 heard of. Upon this alleged intercourse with the Mahatmas, and 
 particularly with Kut Humi, who soon became a well-known 
 personage, an extensive system of fraud was organised by this 
 honest couple at Madras. Madame Blavatsky received and 
 forwarded all correspondence between her credulous followers 
 and Kut Humi ; at Bombay, where her room was merely roofed 
 in with cloth, the answers always fell to her from the roof; at 
 Madras, where she had an apartment the roof of which was 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 381 
 
 more solid, she found them in a letter-box — between which and 
 her bedchamber there existed a secret passage. Roses falling in 
 showers, music sounding in the air, writing on the wall, or on a 
 paper laid upon the floor far from pen or pencil, duplication of 
 objects, the disappearance of persons from a room, etc. — these 
 were Colonel Olcott's miracles. Kut Humi, the Mahatma, even 
 went so far as to show himself in his astral body ; and Olcott 
 weighed in a balance all the spirits who put in an appearance, 
 and found that their actual weight was from fifty-two to 
 eighty-eight pounds avoirdupois ! All these striking spiritual 
 phenomena created tremendous excitement in India ; young 
 India believed the golden days of the old Rishis had returned, 
 and that ere long, ashamed and speechless, the last missionary 
 would leave the country. 
 
 But the enchantment was not to last long. In 1884 Olcott 
 and Madame Blavatsky made a trip to Europe ; in their absence 
 quarrels arose in the Theosophical Association at Madras, and 
 a French lady, the bosom friend of Madame Blavatsky, Madame 
 Coulomb, was turned out of the Committee. Deeply hurt, she 
 betook herself in a rage to the Scotch missionaries at the 
 Christian College, the most famous missionary college in South 
 India, and revealed the entire fraud. Her husband, who was an 
 engineer, had constructed in Madame Blavatsky's house a room 
 fitted up with all the tricks and apparatus necessary for her 
 jugglery ; quite a number of unquestionably genuine letters from 
 Madame Blavatsky to Madame Coulomb, the originals of which 
 were handed over to the missionaries, proved how the former 
 had planned and carried out one artful deception after another. 
 Madame Coulomb actually gave a public seance at which she 
 repeated all the most remarkable " manifestations of the 
 Mahatma," and explained the tricks connected therewith. The 
 missionaries published a series of articles in the Christian 
 College Magazine entitled " The Collapse of Koot Hoomi." 
 Madame Blavatsky and her numerous supporters foamed with 
 rage ; but the proofs against them were too convincing, and they 
 did not dare to impeach the missionaries. Gribble, a retired 
 English judge, carefully went through all the originals of 
 Madame Blavatsky's letters, and pronounced his verdict : " The 
 letters are genuine ; Madame Blavatsky is guilty." The Psychic 
 Society of London sent out a Commissioner to India, in order 
 to examine the affair scientifically ; and it, too, concluded that 
 the whole business was pure fraud. Madame Blavatsky and 
 Colonel Olcott were forced shamefacedly to withdraw ; they 
 were checkmated. It is difficult to believe that ten years later 
 Colonel Olcott appeared again in India ; he has founded a 
 " Heathen Missionary Society," the " Buddha Gaya Maha 
 
382 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Bodhi Sabha," or " Association of the Great Illumination of 
 Buddha Gaya," by which the whole of India is to be re-converted 
 to Buddhism. Madame Blavatsky was, beyond all measure of 
 doubt, an arrant cheat ; Olcott, a very credulous man, was 
 perhaps as much self-deceived as deceiving. What a pity that 
 such will o' the wisps should appear from the Christian West to 
 disturb the work of Christian missions in India. 
 
 Madame Blavatsky retired to England, and sought to make 
 a fresh start with her fraudulent practices in various spiritualistic 
 and theosophic circles. Here she succeeded in drawing into her 
 net a splendid victim, no less a one than the brilliant journalist 
 and famous defender of materialism, Annie Besant.^ This lady, 
 too, had had a chequered career. Born in 1847, she had 
 received a good English religious education, and then plunged 
 into society, and at the age of twenty married a High Church 
 clergyman. At that period she had such high Anglican 
 tendencies that in her first published work, a tract on fasting, 
 she advocated well-nigh Roman Catholic views. Within a few 
 years, however, she took up a wholly different standpoint; she 
 discarded all the traditions of her youth and of her Church, left 
 her husband and her home, and, adopting enthusiastically the 
 materialistic conception of life, she entered upon a period of 
 unqualified atheism. She became a member of the association 
 founded by Charles Bradlaugh, the well-known atheist, and was 
 an ardent contributor to his magazine, TJie Social Reformer] 
 she wrote books such as Aly Path to Atheism, which wrought 
 much havoc in England, and which travelled even as far as 
 India, where they were greedily devoured by blase young India. 
 As an agitator of twenty years' standing on behalf of materialism 
 and atheism, and eloquent both in speech and with the pen, she 
 was ensnared by the thorough-paced Madame Blavatsky, and 
 within a few weeks the easily enthused lady was once more 
 completely transformed She passed over to the spiritualist and 
 theosophist camp to the sound of music and dancing, believed 
 all the humbug about Madame Blavatsky's intercourse with Kut 
 Humi and the other Mahatmas, and declared a war to the 
 knife on materialism! Madame Blavatsky died in 1891. It 
 was probably from her that Mrs. Besant received the impulse to 
 go to India, and there to revive the lost cause of theosophy. 
 With her attractive personality and her bewildering eloquence 
 she was the very woman to do it. 
 
 In 1893 she went out to India, and since then she has 
 become one factor the more in the intellectual life of the country 
 to be reckoned with by the missionaries, whose task was already 
 
 ^ Basle Missionary Mag., 1897, pp. 369, 419: " Zwei neuste Apostel des 
 Hinduismus." 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 383 
 
 difficult enough. What does Mrs. Besant teach ? Although 
 heart and soul a theosophist like " the world's greatest woman 
 teacher," Madame Blavatsky, she was not, like that lady and her 
 squire Olcott, pledged to Buddhism ; on the contrary she gave 
 herself out to be an inspired representative of Hinduism. As in 
 the case of Blavatsky and Olcott, it is difficult to decide how 
 much is conscious mendacity on her part, how much the exuber- 
 ance of extravagant eloquence, and how much honest conviction. 
 We must even take the confused mixture as we find it, and as 
 she has served it out to the people of India. She declared at 
 Bangalore that she had been a Hindu pandita in a previous 
 existence, and that she had made a prolonged sojourn in the 
 West, where she had had to undergo a reincarnation in order to 
 understand the nature of the materialistic civilisation of Chris- 
 tianity ! She said she had now returned to India with an 
 absolute belief in all the Hindu deities, great and small, in caste, 
 in the transmigration of souls, etc. She cried to the Hindus, 
 " Retain your idols." They must not throw away their toys 
 even when they had outgrown them. Adults might perhaps 
 need them no longer, but their children and grandchildren did. 
 The idols are such pertinent types, " magnetic symbols of 
 godhead, full of spiritualising influences." All she sought was 
 to restore Aryan civilisation, the oldest, truest, and best in the 
 world. " India was a mighty empire so long as the laws of 
 Manu (the caste laws) were followed to the very letter, but when 
 the spirit of these laws was forgotten, horde after horde of 
 foreign conquerors swept across India, and subjugated it." 
 " Those who by many births have garnered rich experience in 
 all things human and divine, return as Brahmans. Cherish 
 therefore this God-given plant" (caste!). Hindu theosophy was 
 the best of all philosophies ; the Hindus were the wisest of all 
 nations ; Sanskrit was the most beautiful of all tongues ; Western 
 civilisation, in spite of all its discoveries, could not be compared 
 to Hindu civilisation. And the best things we possessed in the 
 Western world were all borrowed from India. " For the Hindu 
 there is no false religion, since every form of worship truly 
 believed in is for the believer absolutely true, and contains for 
 him precisely that strength and impulse which is needed for his 
 higher development. And we may even go farther than this ; 
 the Hindu believes that the religion and confession in which a 
 man is born and brought up is a far more potent means in his 
 uplifting than the acceptance of a new, different religion ;" — and 
 in this style of unscrupulous glorification of Hinduism in all its 
 forms and phases her speeches went echoing from the great cities 
 on the plains of Hindustan to the temples of the Tamil country. 
 And the Hindus neither can nor will differentiate what in this 
 
384 HISTORY OB^ INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 exaggerated flood of eloquence is wittingly untrue, what is 
 flattery addressed to the inordinate pride of the listeners, and 
 what proceeds from real conviction. Remembering her 
 chameleon-like history, and the extraordinarily limited amount 
 of her actual knowledge of India when she suddenly appeared 
 there with decided and settled convictions on all its multitudi- 
 nous questions and problems in 1893, we cannot but form a 
 low opinion of the sincerity of her eloquence, nor dare we 
 name her in the same breath with honest students, such as 
 Professors Max Mliller or Deussen, who after profound research 
 have arrived at a favourable judgment upon Hinduism. But 
 what confusion must be wrought in the minds and hearts of the 
 Hindus, who as a race cling so tenaciously to the things of the 
 past, when, after missionaries and scholars have for a century 
 past described their faith and heathen rules of life as untrue, 
 indefensible, and pernicious, there appears an eloquent English- 
 woman who describes this very Hinduism as the supreme 
 wisdom of the world. Since 1900 Mrs. Besant has made 
 Benares her headquarters. In this citadel of orthodox 
 Hinduism, aided by her faithful disciple. Dr. Richardson, she 
 has founded a great central " Hindu College," which has been 
 magnificently endowed by various Indian Rajahs, and is to be 
 " the most valuable of all existing agencies for the redemption of 
 India." In the College grounds a temple has been erected to 
 Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning; over the portal of 
 the main building is enthroned a representation of the elephant- 
 headed Ganesa ; Krishna worship is the keynote of the religious 
 instruction given in the College, and the Bhagavad Gita is the 
 " Bible " of its students. Whilst Mrs. Besant claims to be a 
 Hindu, one of the other English professors plays the role of 
 Buddhist. What intelligent Hindus think of Mrs. Besant's 
 doings is shown by the following extract from the Indian 
 (Christian) newspaper, Sattiavarthauiani : " We have not 
 the slightest doubt that her influence in India rests in reality 
 upon the extent to which she has sought to put herself on the 
 same level as the Hindus. She flatters the national and 
 superstitious prejudices of the people. The damage she inflicts 
 upon India by her attempts forcibly to restore the old dying 
 superstitions and old-fashioned customs is incalculable." And 
 the Hindu newspaper Reis and Rayat (March i6th, 1895) 
 says : " When an educated English lady claims to be an 
 enthusiast for the mysticism of the Tantra and Krishna cults, it 
 is time for every true lover of his country to tell her openly that 
 we neither need nor desire her eloquence to gild over what we 
 know to be rottenness and decay." Real Hindu scholars, the 
 pundits, make sport of this " heroine of words," who has never 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 385 
 
 penetrated'the secrets of old Indian philosophy ; but English- 
 trained Young India, which has broken with the past, but which 
 because of weakness of character cannot shake off its shackles, 
 greets her with acclamation. Is she not an incarnate excuse for 
 their occupying a neutral position ? Whether Mrs. Besant, 
 protean nature as she is, has yet come to the end of her trans- 
 formations, who can tell ? 
 
 We mentioned above that Mrs. Besant went out to India 
 in connection with the Theosophical Society; may we be 
 allowed one more word concerning this Society, for it has even 
 to-day a certain importance in Indian affairs? It is a matter of 
 common knowledge that this Society, founded in New York 
 in 1875, has in the course of the last three decades spread 
 throughout the whole civilised world from Iceland in the North 
 to New Zealand in the South, and has also branch societies in 
 every country in Europe. Its President is still Colonel Olcott. 
 According to the Report for 1904, it had a total of 325 branch 
 societies, and new ones are added every year. It controls at 
 its central office alone, quite apart from the considerable sums 
 spent by the various branch associations, a yearly income of 
 over ^75,000. But by far the most important field of the Society 
 is India. Here, at Adyar, a suburb of Madras, is situated its 
 headquarters; here we find 198 of the 325 branch societies. It 
 is its Indian work alone which now concerns us. Rev. F. 
 Lazarus, a missionary, sent out a circular letter in 1905 asking 
 for information whereby a just view of the extent and potentiality 
 of the work of this Society might be obtained. According to 
 answers received by him, no less than 90 of the 198 branches 
 have died out, and concerning none of the rest was he informed 
 that they displayed any considerable activity ; many are mere 
 literary or religious clubs. The motive powers are Mrs. Besant, 
 with her captivating and unscrupulous eloquence, and her 
 lieutenants ; wherever they come, branch societies spring out of 
 the ground. But there is a lack of ardent apostles to extend 
 the movement on their own initiative. The Society's chances of 
 life, therefore, should not be computed very high. It is a 
 convenient refuge for Hindus who as a result of their Western 
 training have broken with idol-worship and the superstition of 
 their mother land, but who have not the moral strength and 
 faith to take the self-denying step over to Christianity. It is a 
 modern half-way house for seekers after something better than 
 Hinduism. In this respect, as well as chronologically, it is the 
 successor of the Brahmo Samaj ; it is an eclectic blend of 
 religion whose fortunes in India at the present time appear to 
 be bound up with the personality of Mrs. Besant. 
 
 At the Chicago Congress of Religions in 1893 considerable 
 25 
 
386 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 attention was aroused by a young Hindu of some thirty years 
 of age, dressed in elegant and picturesque orange or purple 
 robes, having a magnificent silk turban wreathed about a lofty 
 forehead, from beneath which flashed two dark vision-filled eyes. 
 Swami Vivekananda was the name he gave himself; that is, 
 " The Leader to the Joys of (Indian) Religious Philosophy." He 
 gave lectures in Chicago which were favoured by extraordinarily 
 large audiences, and seeing that he was rapidly becoming famous, 
 the Swami remained in America for three years after the close 
 of the Congress, lecturing in all the large towns. He then came 
 to England, where he also gave a large number of lectures. His 
 subject was always Hinduism, which he proclaimed in remark- 
 ably fluent and correct English, and with an inexhaustible fund 
 of illustrations, as the highest wisdom. It certainly was not the 
 old genuine Hinduism, neither the philosophically consistent 
 system of the Vedantas, nor yet the polytheistic Hinduism of 
 the masses of the people, but a hybrid form, decked out with 
 many spangles of Western philosophy and of Christian phrase- 
 ology. " The whole conflict which finds expression in the Hindu 
 system is an ardent wrestling to be perfect, to be godlike, to 
 attain unto God, to see God, and, as far as the Hindus do thus 
 attain to, and see God, to be perfect even as their Father in 
 heaven is perfect. That is the essence of Indian religion," — 
 a description of the Hindu attempt at identification with 
 God which has a remarkably Christian ring about it. " There 
 is no polytheism," announced the Swami boldly, presuming on 
 the ignorance of his hearers who could not contradict him. 
 Hinduism is the one all-embracing religion. " From the lofty 
 spiritual flights of Vedanta philosophy which are, as it were, the 
 echo of the most recent discoveries in science (!), from the 
 agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains right 
 down to the very lowest ideas of the idol-worshippers and to the 
 teeming mythologies, everything has its place in Hinduism." 
 One can only ask, if this be so, how it is that the Hindus drove 
 out Buddhism with fire and sword, and persecuted in such 
 bloody fashion the Jains. " We have discovered the secrets by 
 which the depths of the ocean of memory may be explored ; 
 follow them up, and you will gain perfect recollection of your 
 former state of existence," and so on. And in how contemptu- 
 ous a manner he could speak of sin ! " O children of deathless 
 joy ! what a sweet precious name ! Let me, my brethren, call 
 you by this sweet name ! Ye are the children of God, partners 
 of joy immortal, holy and perfect beings. And ye, the sons of 
 God upon earth, are told ye are sinners? It is a sin to name ye 
 thus ! It is a perpetual libel on human nature." ^ 
 
 ^ Rev. E. Thompson, M.A., The Teaching of Swami Fiveianafida {Madras, 1898). 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 387 
 
 The handsome young Hindu had great crowds of enthusiastic 
 hearers devoid of critical acumen, particularly in America ; every- 
 where ladies swarmed to listen to him. He even made a few 
 proselytes — an eccentric Frenchwoman, who adopted the name 
 of Swami Abhayananda, and a Russian Jew, Swami Kripa- 
 nanda. An English captain and his wife, Series by name, even 
 wanted to accompany him to India, in order to erect a " Home 
 for Western Sannyasis," near Almora, in the Himalayas ; and a 
 Mr. Godwin wished to accompany the Swami everywhere. His 
 most faithful disciple was undoubtedly Miss Margaret Noble, 
 an American, who went out to India after him. She has 
 recently published (1904) a book. The Web of Indian Life, 
 by Sister Nividita (her Indian pseudonym) of Ramakrishna 
 Vivekananda (London, W. Heinemann). According to the 
 views therein expressed, everything Indian is glorious and 
 worthy of admiration, even polygamy and the prohibition of the 
 marriage of widows. Suttee is simply an expression of belief 
 in the mystic unity of souls, and " with this belief in her heart, 
 what woman would not have laughed at the flames ? " 
 
 In India there was as much astonishment at first as there 
 had been in America at the appearance of the young Swami. 
 It was ascertained that his real name was Norendra Nath Dutt, 
 that he had been born in a Kayasth family at Calcutta, and had 
 received his education at the General Assembly's Institution of 
 the Established Church of Scotland — that is, at a well-known 
 missionary foundation. He was known to have been for years 
 under the influence of one of the most adventurous Sannyasis 
 with whom public rumour busied itself in Calcutta, Ram Krishna 
 Paramhansa, whom Professor Max Mliller has raised to unmerited 
 repute by the publication of his biography.^ Hitherto he (Vive- 
 kananda) had only been known in the narrower circles of the 
 Brahmo Samaj, which he had joined at an early age. His 
 conduct was out of all agreement with the rules of the sacred 
 books. He who travelled across the ocean only, exposed 
 himself to the severest penalties and to expulsion from caste, 
 and in addition to this the Swami had frequented American 
 hotels, partaken of food prepared by white men, and smoked 
 innumerable cigarettes. Further, it is forbidden in the Shastras 
 to make proselytes of any who are not Hindus. But the 
 conduct of the Swami in appearing before the public in this way 
 at all was an infringement of all custom ; according to orthodox 
 teaching, a man could only become a Swami after completing 
 the six steps (tapa) of the Yoga by long years of asceticism. 
 
 ^ Ram Krishna, His Life and Sayings (London, 1898). Cf. Papers for Thoughtful 
 Men, No. XII., " Ram Krishna Paramhansa," by Rev. K. S. Macdonald (Calcutta, 
 1900). 
 
388 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Such a Swami ought to go about entirely, or at any rate half 
 naked, in order to demonstrate his complete superiority to all 
 conventions of men and his renunciation of the world. Above 
 all, he should be a Brahman ; for even to read the sacred Vedas 
 within the hearing of a Sudra is grievous sin. And here was 
 a Sudra appearing as the apostle of Hinduism ; and there was 
 scarcely one single point in which his teaching agreed with 
 orthodox Hinduism, and the pundits could easily have pointed 
 out to the Swami a hundred blunders and gross mistakes with 
 regard to their sacred didactic writings. 
 
 But all these considerations receded into the background 
 before the truly intoxicating discovery that this Swami was 
 making Hinduistic propaganda on an immense scale away 
 yonder in America. Exaggerated newspaper reports, and the 
 boundless vanity of the Swami himself, revelled in the thought 
 that Christianity was declining lower and lower, that Europe 
 and America were hungering after the higher truth in Hinduism, 
 and that tens of thousands would swell the ranks of the faithful 
 within a few years. Instead of Americans and Englishmen 
 coming to them as hitherto to carry on Christian missions, 
 Hindu apostles were now to be sent to them ; and whereas 
 missionaries had met with scarcely any real success in India, 
 Hindu apostles would find open doors on all sides in these long 
 civilised countries, and would Hinduise America in particular 
 within a few decades ! These were indeed brilliant prospects, 
 and it is not to be wondered at that when the Swami again 
 landed in South India, in December 1896, he received a magni- 
 ficent welcome. With true Oriental luxuriance of imagination 
 he was proclaimed to be one of the old holy Rishis, or a 
 Bairagi, or sacred penitent, who had overcome the world. His 
 journey through India was one long triumphal procession ; his 
 name was in every mouth. Wherever the missionaries began 
 to proclaim the gospel in the schools or bazaars, the name of 
 the Swami was at once held up against them in all confidence 
 of victory ; the universal opinion was that since he had appeared. 
 Christian missions were doomed. And the Swami seems to 
 have entertained serious thoughts of starting an anti-Christian 
 Hinduistic missionary movement for India and the West. 
 He retired to a monastery, i.e. Matha, in the Himalayas, and 
 gathered his disciples about him, in order that he might prepare 
 them in his own way to be the apostles of Hinduism. But it 
 was not to be: on July 4th, 1902, he died suddenly in Calcutta, 
 at the early age of thirty-nine. 
 
 We have given the name of " will o' the wisps " to these 
 remarkable personalities who have hurtled in such meteoric 
 fashion across the broad vault of the Indian sky. In the great 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 389 
 
 spiritual struggle consequent upon a genuine consideration of 
 the relative merits of Hinduism and Christianity, of East and 
 West, the use of false and dishonourable weapons can but 
 confuse the issues of the struggle, and render it still more 
 embittered. These apostles of a pseudo Hinduism calumniated 
 and defamed Christianity just as shamefully as on the other 
 hand they idealised and glorified Hinduism. It is owing to 
 this inward lack of truthfulness, too, that the brilliant advertise- 
 ment they received at the outset only too quickly lost its 
 virtue. Further, this age of telegraph wires renders publicity 
 too easy for clumsy swindles like those of Madame Blavatsky, 
 or for such gross self-adoration as that of Swami Vivekananda, 
 to last even for a short number of years. The cause of missions 
 emerged from these attacks without a stain. It is deplorable 
 that a sense of truth is so little developed in the Hindus that 
 they do not turn away with disgust from the wholly deceitful 
 proceedings of these their grandiloquent defenders and 
 champions. 
 
 3. Efforts towards a Revival of Hinduism 
 
 The shortlived movements just described link themselves 
 on to, and in part help to promote, a more general, more far- 
 reaching intellectual agitation, the so-called " Revival of Hindu- 
 ism." The enthusiasm for Mrs. Besant and Swami Vivekananda 
 was aroused and chiefly maintained by the hope that in them 
 valuable allies had been discovered for the conflict against 
 Christianity, or for the defence of the old worship of idols — two 
 objects which of course go hand in hand. Nothing is more 
 indicative of the continued success of missions, nothing proves 
 more clearly their indirect advance, or the extent to which 
 Hinduism feels its spiritual supremacy threatened, than these 
 attempts at revival and self-defence. We must therefore take 
 them into consideration, no matter how little we may 
 sympathise with many of their methods. 
 
 In the month of April 1887 a " Hindu Tract Society "^ was 
 founded at Madras with the object of publishing extracts from 
 the ancient sacred writings, issuing tracts of a polemic nature 
 against Christianity, and sending out preachers to work in 
 opposition to the missionaries. Its promoters took up the 
 conservative standpoint of protecting and defending ancient 
 Hinduism in the widest sense, and they summoned to their aid 
 the grosser instincts of the superstitious masses of the people, 
 whom they made no scruple of exciting into a state of sheer 
 
 ^ Handmann, Kantpf der Gezstcr, p. 57 ci scq. 
 
390 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 fanaticism against the missionaries. For several years the 
 energies of the latter in South India were sensibly handi- 
 capped ; whenever they began to preach in the street or at the 
 melas, the Hindu preachers at once appeared, and either made 
 them a laughing-stock, shouted them down, or incited the 
 people to actual violence. The missionaries were often badly 
 handled, attacked with stones or covered with filth. For such 
 brutish procedure, of course, no intellectual equipment was 
 necessary. But besides this, tracts surpassing in noxious 
 vulgarity anything that had preceded them were published and 
 circulated broadcast among the common people. And here 
 the Hindus benefited by the fact that just about this time 
 unbelieving and atheistic publishers and booksellers both in 
 England and America were making great efforts to create in 
 India a new market for their wares — whose popularity in the 
 home country had very rapidly died down. The polluted 
 stream of modern unbelief, of agnosticism, and atheism now 
 commenced, therefore, to inundate unhappy India. In this 
 disastrous development two phases are clearly traceable: the 
 first, a period when scientifically worthless and shamefully 
 immoral literature was dumped upon the Indian market, and 
 the second when the scientific works of famous Western experts 
 were brought into the forefront of public interest. The time 
 we are now more particularly considering falls within the first of 
 these periods.^ Bradlaugh's writings, especially his Freethinkers' 
 Text-book, Mrs. Besant's My Path to Atheism, the 
 atheistic writings of Ingersoll, Paine, Foote, Aveling, and others, 
 flooded the market. Another section was composed of purely 
 immoral books, such as TJie Evil of Continence, which 
 preached free thought and free love, and which reached 
 twenty-three editions in India alone. Magazines like The 
 Philosophical Inquirer, The Thi?iker, The Anti-Christian, all 
 belonged to the same category. The Christians are described 
 as "thick-skulled, bigoted bloodhounds," the teaching of the 
 missionaries as " the purest idiotic trash " and " the most 
 revolting deception," the Bible is " senseless gossip," " the most 
 disgusting filth," " the obscenest book ever touched by human 
 hands," etc. etc. (We ought to state that these journals were 
 none of them long-lived ; neither the Anti-Christian nor the 
 Philosophical Inquirer survived the fifth year of publication, 
 and the Thinker was only kept above water with difficulty, 
 and by European funds.) The theosophists, Olcott and 
 Blavatsky, with all their train, united in the same outcry. It 
 was a bad sign for the moral and intellectual standard of these 
 
 ^ Allgevteine Miss. Zeitschrift, 1866, p. 433, Dr. Christlieb, " Zur Literatur 
 des Unglaubens in Indien." 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 391 
 
 European circles when India was flooded with such trash 
 merely out of lust after booksellers' profits. It was no wonder 
 that the tracts based on these works issued by the Hindu Tract 
 Society — such as Jesus only a Man, One Hundred and Fifty 
 Bible Contradictions, TJie Bible Cutter — were only a degree 
 more vulgar than they.^ It is of the nature of things that 
 movements having so weak an intellectual and so putrid a 
 moral basis should have but a short existence. After a few 
 years' red-hot zeal and pompous advertisement, the fervour of 
 this aggressive hostility to missions rapidly subsided. It is 
 characteristic that this Hindu Tract Society is essentially a 
 product of South India, and that the theosophists had also 
 found the most receptive soil for their frauds in the neighbour- 
 hood of Madras. 
 
 Let us mention in this connection that from about 1890 
 there has been a change in the intellectual level of the writings 
 imported into India by Western agnosticism and atheism. 
 The demands of Young India have grown. It is no longer 
 satisfied with the tittle-tattle of materialist tirades. It desires 
 the great scientific leaders of modern unbelief: Stuart Mill, 
 Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, the German Hackel,and others 
 have become its delectation. We must admit that it greatly 
 prefers the teachings of these philosophers and naturalists, 
 when served up in some dainty and easily digestible form or 
 in the shape of magazine articles ; as for reading the works of 
 these scholars in their original form, most Indians have been 
 as deficient in perseverance as in the necessary preparatory 
 studies. For blase Young India, however, spoilt by its English 
 education, it is no light consolation to be able to fortify itself 
 in its materialistic barrenness of spirit by the knowledge that 
 it is acquainted with the results of the most modern European 
 thought. 
 
 These particular circles give a hearty welcome to yet 
 another category of English writings, to wit, those in which 
 English and German scholars set forth the excellence and 
 beauty of ancient Indian literature and of the Indian religions ; 
 in this connection the works of Professor Max Miiller of Oxford 
 and of Professor Deussen of Kiel are very widely read. When 
 the latter sets out to prove in detail that the Vedantas not 
 only contain the most sublime philosophy, but also the most 
 satisfying religion, that in their purest forms they are the 
 strongest supports of morality and the supreme consolation in 
 all the vicissitudes of both life and death, a Hindu naturally asks 
 
 ^ An insight into the character of Indian polemic literature of this class is given 
 in Allgem. Miss. Zeicschrif/y 1902, p. 343, " Kine literarische Fehde gegen das 
 Christentum." 
 
392 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIOxNS 
 
 himself, " Why then should I acquire the wisdom of foreign 
 teachers ? " There can be no manner of doubt that this 
 importation of modern European unbelief has placed a most 
 serious obstacle in the way of missions, particularly as regards 
 English-trained Young India, which more and more arrogates 
 to itself the leadership of both the public and the intellectual 
 life of the country. 
 
 Of much greater importance than the Hindu Tract 
 Society, however, is the Arya Samaj, which has its principal 
 sphere in the Punjab and its headquarters in Lahore. During 
 the last decade it has been one of the most prominent religious 
 movements in Indian life, and has proved a hindrance of some 
 magnitude to the work of missions. 
 
 Its founder, Mul Shankar, the son of Amba Shankar, known 
 by his Brahman name as Swami Dayanand Saraswati, was 
 born in 1824 at a little town in the principality of Morvi, in 
 Kathiawar. His life falls into three periods of almost equal 
 lengths, 1 824-1 845, 1 845-1 863, and 1 863-1 883. His early 
 years were passed in the home of his Brahman parents, whose 
 rule was according to the strictest Saivite customs. He lost 
 faith in idol-worship whilst still only a stripling fourteen 
 years old. During a night vigil in a temple, he saw mice 
 running up and down upon the idol of Siva, and came to the 
 conclusion : " It is impossible to identify the idea of an almighty 
 and living God with this idol, across whose body mice run, and 
 which allows itself to be polluted thereby without the slightest 
 resistance " (extract from his incompleted autobiography). 
 When at the age of twenty-one his father desired him to 
 marry, he conceived such an insurmountable objection to 
 marriage that he secretly left the house of his parents and 
 fled. 
 
 Then for nearly twenty years he led the customary life of 
 a wandering saint, of a Sannyasi, possessed continually, however, 
 by a consuming thirst for knowledge, which led him to visit all 
 the most famous ascetics and teachers. First he was introduced 
 by Vedanta teachers at Baroda and various other places 
 to the depths of their philosophy, and from them he received 
 the name by which he became famous. Their teaching, however, 
 failed to engage his affections permanently, and he turned 
 to the Sankhya Yoga teaching, at the sacred Abu Mountain 
 in Rajputana, where he studied zealously during a period of 
 eight years. (In contrast to the strictly monastic Vedanta, 
 it maintains the existence of two great original principles, 
 soul and matter, whence it is often called " dwaita," or " the 
 teaching of the two principles.") But the determining 
 religious influence of his life was exercised by a blind Vedic 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 393 
 
 scholar, Swami Virajancla of Muttra, a foe to modern Sanskrit 
 literature, who only received Dayanand as his disciple on con- 
 dition that he discarded all his modern Sanskrit books — the 
 Puranas and Tantras. For eight long years Virajanda 
 instructed him in the deep lore of the Vedas, and finally dis- 
 missed him with his blessing, and the words : " Go forth into 
 the world and bring light to mankind." It is remarkable that 
 a man like Dayanand should have found it possible to study 
 for twenty years in modern British India without once coming 
 into close contact with Western civilisation ; but he never even 
 learnt English. During the last twenty years of his life 
 Dayanand journeyed to and fro as a wandering teacher of 
 religion in North India, arguing and disputing, with equal 
 severity and unrelenting gruffness of demeanour, with Brahmans 
 and missionaries alike. Warfare against idol-worship was an 
 essential part of his life-work ; upon the priests at idol temples 
 and their apologists he mercilessly poured forth vials of the 
 bitterest mockery and keenest reasoning. For a time he allied 
 himself with the theosophist Olcott, but later severed all con- 
 nection with him, nor did relations with the Brahmo Samaj 
 and similar associations prove any more satisfactory to him. 
 On the loth of April 1875 he founded in Bombay the Arya 
 Samaj, which did not, however, gain a footing in Western India; 
 it found acceptance almost entirely in the North, in the Punjab, 
 and the neighbouring districts. On the 30th of October 1883 
 he died at Ajmer. 
 
 Both by his doctrine and its tendencies, Dayanand belongs 
 wholly to the rcvivalistic movement outlined above. He too 
 sought solely to regenerate India by a return to the ancient 
 sources of inspiration, only he went a stage farther back, 
 beyond the mediaeval age of the Puranas and the epochs of the 
 Pirahmanas and the Upanishads, to the Vedas themselves. 
 " Back to the Vedas " was the warcry of his life. Without 
 doubt this was a happy, nay a fruitful idea ; for on the one hand 
 the Vedas are regarded by Indians of the most diverse schools 
 of thought as of supreme authority, and on the other they 
 represent a comparatively pure form of religion, replete with 
 sound morals and suggestions of lines along which subsequent 
 devolopment may ensue. That the inspired representative of 
 classical Indian antiquity should have united with these efforts 
 a political battle-cry of" India for the Indians," and a hope that 
 a new India, once more drawing its life-power from the Vedas, 
 should arise to become an empire clothed in all its ancient 
 glory and superior to all its enemies, is easily understood, and 
 was in no wise dangerous, since Dayanand refrained from 
 political agitation. But for this very reason he was the less 
 
394 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 acceptable to both the other religions, Islam and Christianity, 
 working alongside of him. For neither of these are of Indian 
 origin, and, according to his view, they had no business there 
 and ought to be rooted out no matter at how great a cost. His 
 polemics, especially against Christianity, are therefore unspeak- 
 ably violent and unjust, and can scarcely be paralleled in the 
 whole literature of religious controversy. Since his followers 
 also attack Christianity and Christian missions with equal 
 bitterness, we have in this party yet another malignant ad- 
 versary of missionary progress. 
 
 Dayanand's main idea, " Nothing but the Vedas," would 
 have had much in its favour if it had been accompanied by a 
 sound material principle ; that is to say, if the prophet of the 
 Vedas had only had sufficient scientific insight, sound historical 
 judgment, and prophetic discernment rightly to grasp and to 
 reproduce that which was permanently of value and of true 
 significance in the Vedas. But for this he had neither the 
 necessary intelligence nor the education. His philosophical 
 bias was of the Sankhya school, whose dual principle he 
 enlarged to a triple one, God, the soul, and matter, a trinity it 
 was impossible to defend against any skilful attack, and which 
 in any case found no justification in the Vedas. In another 
 direction, too, we can see how truly and essentially " Indian " 
 was his thought, namely, by his retention of the doctrine of 
 the transmigration of souls, and of an impersonal principle of 
 retribution. Karma, regulating that transmigration. No more 
 than in the previous case, however, are these two conceptions, 
 which have played such an important role in the later philo- 
 sophies, to be traced to the older Vedas. Further, his actual 
 mode of expressing his fundamental principle led Dayanand 
 to the conclusion that all knowledge and perception the human 
 mind has hitherto attained, or will attain unto, must exist, at 
 least germinally, in the Vedas. All the discoveries of modern 
 science, railways, telegraphs, steam-boats, and steam-engines, 
 may be derived, according to his ideas, from the Vedas. In 
 short, Dayanand was incapable of allowing the Vedas to speak 
 for themselves, or of absorbing their spirit and substance; he 
 compelled them rather to affirm precisely what suited his con- 
 venience for the time being. In fact, that peculiar and highly 
 arbitrary cxegetical principle which has been called after him, 
 the Dayanandi, is very truly the secret and shibboleth of his 
 school. No scientific methods, no historically critical exegesis, 
 but simply the caprice of Dayanand, and in some cases that of 
 his most famous disciple Gurudatta, are to decide the meaning 
 of any given passage. He who does not bow to such an ex- 
 planation, who does not accept it unconditionally, must submit 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 395 
 
 to being ridiculed as an ignoramus, an "arch-fool." The 
 rightful conception of the Vedas and their age, the description 
 of the conditions therein existent, are all in the highest 
 degree arbitrary and fantastic, and render the main idea 
 scientifically valueless, and open to attack from all sides, from 
 the Brahman as well as the Christian camp. To complete 
 his misfortunes, Dayanand formulated some doctrines on his 
 own account that are as un-Indian as they are un-Vedic, and 
 whose appearance in this connection has never been clearly 
 explained, even by his most devoted followers. The worst 
 of these is the Niyoga, or " free-love doctrine." According 
 to it, any man or woman may on the most trivial grounds 
 break the marriage vow without fear of punishment, and 
 cohabit with others according to choice, whether widows 
 or widowers, husbands or wives. Happily, the school has 
 never attempted to translate this dissolute teaching into 
 practice. 
 
 However feeble and untenable Dayanand's teaching was 
 from the scientific or historical standpoint, nevertheless the 
 admiration for the Vedas and the Vedic era which was effected 
 therein, and its warm patriotic enthusiasm for India's antiquity 
 and future, sufficed, as we have already mentioned, to procure 
 for the Arya Samaj — as well as the high-sounding name of the 
 " Noble Order of the Aryans " — a considerable following, 
 particularly in the Punjab and the United Provinces. Soon 
 after the death of its founder, however, the Samaj split up into 
 two parties, the Mansis and Ghasis, the flesh-eaters and the 
 vegetarians, who in spite of occasional rapprochements are so 
 mutually opposed to one another that they have distinct and 
 entirely independent party organisations ; we ought, therefore, 
 really to speak of two Arya Samajes. Their point of difference 
 is found in their respective attitudes to their founder. The 
 vegetarians contend, on the one hand, that Dayanand was a 
 great Rishi and prophet ; his word is unconditionally binding, 
 and none but an equally great Rishi may change one jot or 
 tittle of it. The more liberal flesh-eaters, on the other hand, 
 speak less extravagantly of the inspiration and infallibility 
 of the Master. His teaching is in the main correct, but is not 
 in every detail incontrovertible. In trifling matters of doctrine 
 all who have received an adequate scientific education may 
 rightly hold varying views. In other words, the flesh-eaters 
 desire to hold the way open for scientific progress. They are 
 therefore zealous advocates of education, as regards which, in 
 remarkable contrast to their founder, they have heartily 
 fallen into line with the Indian educational system. Their 
 Dayanand Anglo- Vedic College at Lahore is the best attended 
 
396 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 educational establishment in that city, and in the whole Punjab. 
 The other more consistent and biased party solemnly main- 
 tains the exclusive authority of the Vedas, sanctions only an 
 education in Sanskrit confined to the archaic methods of the 
 Talmudists, and has inaugurated in the village of Kangri, near 
 Hardwar, a Vedic College, or so-called " Gurukula." Both 
 parties are zealous in propaganda, and support a paid staff of 
 itinerant preachers to disseminate their doctrines. In all the 
 cities of the Punjab, in most of those of the United Provinces, and 
 as far as the centre of Northern India, there are branch Samajes. 
 It is further remarkable that in the Punjab the movement has been 
 confined almost entirely to the cities, whereas in the United 
 Provinces it is the open country which has principally been 
 influenced by it. Various explanations are offered for the fact 
 that the Punjab has become the headquarters of the new move- 
 ment. Some say that because of the close juxtaposition of 
 Hindus and Muhammadans the caste system is there consider- 
 ably weakened, and Muhammadan and Sikh influences have 
 there awakened in Hinduism a strong monotheistic tendency. 
 Others affirm that as far as Sanskrit learning is concerned, the 
 Punjab is behind all other provinces of India, and that this 
 ignorance is responsible for many people joining a sect bearing 
 such a strong stamp of orthodoxy upon it. The number of the 
 adherents of the Samaj has increased during the last decade by 
 about 25,000 — that is, from 41,000 to 67,107. Authorities in the 
 Punjab appear to be unanimous in the belief that the movement 
 has no great future to expect. " After carefully weighing over 
 the whole matter, I have come to the conclusion," says Professor 
 Campbell Oman,i " j-^^t the most promising outlook the Arya 
 Samaj can have is to become an unimportant sect amongst the 
 myriads into which Hinduism is divided." Nevertheless, there 
 are those both in the Punjab and in the United Provinces 
 who claim for the Samaj a rapid and not inconsiderable growth 
 in influence. 
 
 Akin in spirit to the Arj'a Samaj, though to all outward 
 appearances having no direct connection with it, is the movement 
 initiated in Madras by the distinguished Brahman, Ragunath 
 Rao Bahadur, a former Prime Minister of the state of Indore. 
 He has been to a certain extent under Christian influences, as is 
 seen from the fact that a Catechism for Hindus which he has 
 compiled was copied in part from the Presbyterian Catechism ! 
 He desired, however, to protect the rising generation of Hindus 
 from the influences of the mission schools, and therefore founded 
 in Madras a "National College" on a strictly Hindu founda- 
 tion. He was a somewhat listless though eloquent advocate 
 
 ^ Iiidiati Life, p. 23. 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 397 
 
 of social reform, of a confused though very well-meaning 
 cast of mind, and in consequence has exerted no abiding 
 influence. 
 
 The Bombay Presidency, too, has had its own Samaj, though 
 this has not had one tithe of the importance possessed by the 
 Brahmo Samaj in Bengal or the Arya Samaj in the Punjab. It 
 is called the Prathana Samaj (" Prayer Society "). P'ounded 
 on March 31st, 1867, it counts branch societies in nearly all the 
 important towns, though it cannot point to any considerable 
 number of adherents. Its object is the propagation of a colour- 
 less form of theism. Article I. of its creed runs : " God is the 
 Creator of the universe ; He is the only true God ; there is no 
 God beside Him ; He is eternal, spiritual, immortal ; . . . the 
 Saviour of sinners." Article II.: "Worshipping Him can alone 
 lead to happiness in this and in the other world." Article IV. : 
 " To pray to, and to adore images or other created things is 
 not the right way to worship God." Article V. : " God does 
 not become man, no book contains a direct and infallible 
 revelation of God." This Samaj has never attained to any 
 extensive vitality. 
 
 Alongside of these organised efforts at a revival of Hinduism, 
 we find numerous other attempts of a private character. They 
 derive their motive power from national feeling, a feeling which 
 is becoming more and more active every day. This sentiment 
 lies at the root of the whole revival movement, and gives it its 
 signal success. In the unrest and irritation against Christianity 
 which is to-day everywhere finding expression, a burning 
 patriotic yearning after the unity of the Bharata Khanda, the 
 old land of intellect, is clearly asserting itself The greatness of 
 this land, so we are told, is to consist neither in military prowess 
 nor in industrial activity, but in its intellectual insight and 
 knowledge. 
 
 The attempts to bring about a revival of Hinduism are, it 
 must be confessed, extremely divergent.^ Indian antiquity 
 offers an infinite number of types and forms, one of which seems 
 suitable for the renovation process to one person, another to 
 another. In Bengal some believe they are rendering a service 
 to their mother country by giving to the press hitherto un- 
 published Tantra documents, books on magic, amulets and 
 charms, — some of them entirely in red letters, — which are said 
 to heal all diseases, to bring good fortune, to kill enemies, to 
 bewitch women, and even to raise the dead. The literary 
 
 ^ It is worthy of note that this same " national " feeling has manifested itself, e.^^., 
 in trade and in commerce. Especially in Bengal has the Swadeshi movement been 
 talked about recently (1905) ; its object is to persuade Hindus — tradesmen as well as 
 private individuals — to buy and sell Indian goods only, and thus to drive all English 
 articles of commerce from the market. 
 
398 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 adviser of the Anglo-Indian Government remarks there- 
 upon : " The old mages were far wiser than their young 
 successors, for they forbade the publication of these writings, 
 and declared that such secrets lost their virtue when they were 
 exposed to the eyes of the uninitiated." Others think they can 
 defend popular idolatry with the weapons of modern science. 
 The Puranas and the Gospels are for them of equal merit ; if 
 Krishna be legendary, then so also is Christ. Has not a 
 modern radical Biblical Encyclopaedia narrowed down the 
 authentic sayings of Jesus to two or three? Even if Hindu 
 mythology be untrue as history, it is at any rate a useful fiction. 
 And it is so easy, and gives such splendid play for nimble 
 intellects, to explain away the inconvenient features of the 
 legends. And therefore in both English and Bengali the Hindus 
 are equally active in reconciling and explaining away con- 
 tradictory texts, in allegorising repugnant details, or in declaring 
 them to be interpolations. This form of intellectual diversion 
 has been specially cultivated by worshippers of Vishnu and 
 his incarnations, and particularly of Krishna and his great 
 Bengali prophet, Chaitanya. During the last decade a large 
 number of works, some of them of much erudition, have been 
 written by this school. Dr. Nanda Krishna Bose, in his work 
 on " Incarnation," attempts to prove that the doctrine of God 
 becoming man is not contradictory to science, and that 
 Chaitanya's life and teaching offer a more complete religious 
 ideal than those of Christ. Shishir Kumar Ghose has written 
 a book of 674 pages in two volumes, entitled Lord Gouranga, or 
 Salvation for All. " Gouranga" is the popular name for Chaitanya 
 as an incarnation of Vishnu. Sil, in his work Comparative 
 Studies of Vishnuism and Christianity, maintains that Vishnuism 
 is being called upon to make the Christian idea of the Godhead 
 and of the relations subsisting between man and God the 
 common property of the race. A whole pile of books vie in the 
 thankless task of purifying Krishna's life from its supernatural 
 and immoral features and in transforming the God into a 
 kind of nineteenth-century gentleman. The Anglo-Bengali 
 magazine, the Librarian, rightly remarks there can be no 
 doubt that this entire tendency in the religious thought of the 
 Hindus is called forth at any rate as much by the dissemination 
 of Christian ideas as by the study of Hindu literature, for 
 Christian influences can be easily recognised in all these 
 publications (dating from the year 1899 or thereabouts). A 
 similar tendency is shown by the efforts of the recently 
 established Society for the Revival of Indian Literature, 
 which by cheap editions of the classics and by writings about 
 them seeks to stimulate interest in and a knowledge of classic 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 399 
 
 Sanskrit literature. In the United Provinces there have 
 appeared a " Radha Swami " movement and a " Ram Krishna " 
 mission, each endeavouring in its own fashion to ideaHse and to 
 modernise the Krishna legend. 
 
 The main stream of Indian thought and philosophy to-day- 
 is along the lines marked gut by the Vedanta philosophy ; the 
 Upanishads, the " hidden teachings of the Vedas, the finest 
 flower of ancient Indian thought," and the Bhagavad Gita, "the 
 idol of the country, the fairest and noblest of all Brahmanical 
 writings," stand in the forefront of public interest. " The 
 Vedanta philosophy supersedes all other systems as the plan of 
 salvation. Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita enter into competi- 
 tion with the gospel of Christ," writes Dr. Jones of Madura, an 
 experienced missionary. Especially is the Bhagavad Gita — 
 without dispute a most valuable book, and the noblest 
 monument of Hinduism — esteemed beyond measure as the 
 Bible of India. Thousands daily receive therefrom edification. 
 The Hindu revivalist contends that he is striving to regain the 
 lost intellectual position of his race; people who can expound 
 the Shastras and set forth the Hindu ideal of life quickly win 
 a reputation. No small number of those who have received an 
 English education and who hold high offices of state employ 
 their leisure in the study of their forefathers' world of thought. 
 The assertion that the Vedanta doctrine is all-embracing and 
 inimitable in its architectonic construction and that it is in 
 complete harmony with the progress of modern scientific 
 thought is emphatically defended. Since about the middle 
 of last century two well-edited English magazines, issued by 
 India scholars, the Bi-ahniavadin (" The Comprehender of 
 Brahma") and the Prabuddha Bharata ("Awakened India"), 
 have been published in Madras to voice this Vedantic point 
 of view ; their object is also to stimulate the study of the 
 same, and " ever to hold on high the lofty and universal ideal 
 of Hinduism." The first of these periodicals is peculiarly the 
 organ for the exposition of the religious thought of India in 
 English. 
 
 Although there is doubtless in this whole movement a 
 certain religious spirit at work beneath these old forms of 
 Hinduism, we must none the less remember that the revival 
 movement itself is kept alive far more by national and 
 intellectual pride than by deep religious feeling. It is not so 
 much the result of an honest conviction concerning the 
 superiority of the particular doctrines and institutions of 
 Hinduism singled out for attention, as a patriotic attempt to 
 harmonise their ideals with those of Christianity, whose advance 
 can be perceived in every part of the globe. A certain proud 
 
400 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 self-consciousness — that there can be nothing in Christianity 
 which research cannot discover in Hinduism — and a fertile 
 criticism of traditional and nominal Christianity, are the 
 characteristics of the religious movement of the last decade.^ 
 The evangelisation of the Hindus as a people is, in the opinion 
 of Young India, as far off as the Millennium, " There is room 
 enough in the world for both Hinduism and Christianity," 
 Unhappily this too general pseudo-patriotic spirit blinds many of 
 their best men to the honest study of the religious problem. 
 For far too large a number religious truths are little more than 
 objects upon which to exercise their ingenuity and opportunities 
 for airing their dialectics. Too much criticism and disputation, 
 too little serious investigation and solid thinking, are the signs 
 of the times. And the aimless steering hither and thither of 
 the revival, as new examples of the multitudinous features of the 
 religion and literature of ancient India are picked out and 
 brought into prominence, lend it no element of hope, no 
 prospect of enduring success. 
 
 4. Corresponding Movements in Indian 
 
 muhammadanism 
 
 One often hears and reads the assertion that, whilst 
 Hinduism has responded with an astonishing degree of 
 receptivity to every religious enterprise undertaken by Chris- 
 tian missions, the latter have not as yet been able to exert 
 the least abiding influence upon Indian Muhammadanism. 
 That is absolutely untrue. The leaven of Western culture 
 and of missionary activity is also at work amongst 
 the Indian followers of Islam, though the results assume 
 other and more abstruse forms, and they are not equally 
 large in every province. Of the 62h millions of Indian 
 Muhammadans, fully two-fifths reside in Bengal, especially in 
 the eastern part of Lower Bengal, where they generally 
 constitute the lower class village population, living in the 
 densest ignorance, and taking practically no part at all in 
 the modern intellectual life and development of India. Their 
 Muhammadanism is so interpenetrated with low Hindu and 
 pagan elements that the Census officials were often in 
 doubt whether to reckon certain groups under the heading of 
 Muhammadans or Hindus. Their language, too, a remarkable 
 
 ^ The protean-shaped character of Hinduism is demonstrated by the fact that to-day 
 it is striving to accentuate those features in its mollusc-lilvc system which it is most easily 
 possible to bring into harmony with Christianity. This unlimited faculty of adapta- 
 tion, however, is quite as much a weakness as a strength of this religion ; for it 
 proves to the sincere investigator the absence of a real content of truth. 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 401 
 
 and capriciously mingled compound of Bengali and Urdu, 
 the so-called " Mussalmani Bengali," renders them very diffi- 
 cult of access. There can be scarcely any question of intellectual 
 activity amongst these indolent masses. All that is done is 
 that educated Muhammadans of the towns and cities send out 
 itinerant preachers to dissipate to some slight extent the 
 darkness that exists in the minds of their co-religionists. 
 
 Nor are the Muhammadans of South India distinguished 
 for mental vigour. The sole movement amongst them is that 
 headed by three apostates, White of Karnal, Hamid Snow, 
 a Eurasian, and the somewhat better known Abdullah Ouilliam, 
 who has founded the " New Sect of the Nazarenes," noteworthy 
 because of its having been transplanted by Mr. Quilliam to 
 Liverpool, where it has gained some foothold by means of 
 the "Moslem Institute." Mr. White, or White Khan Sahib 
 as he is called in India, is, according to all appearance, the 
 actual founder ; its adherents are required, in accordance with 
 the example of Jesus, to know something of carpentry ; they 
 use at prayer, as well as Arabic, which they do not understand, 
 Urdu, which they do ; their women may attend the services 
 at the mosques, and so on. The law of Moses is unconditionally 
 binding upon them ; of the New Testament they recognise the 
 Gospel according to St. Matthew, but reject the writings of 
 both St. John and St. Paul. A pilgrimage to Nazareth is 
 one of the most important of their religious duties. The 
 whole movement is obviously a confused and aimless mixture 
 of Islam and Christianity, without inward inspiration or 
 strength.^ 
 
 The only parts of India in which Muhammadanism has 
 hitherto given evidence of independent vitality are the United 
 Provinces and the Punjab, and there interest concentrates around 
 the names of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Mirza Ghulam 
 Ahmed of Qadian. Syed Ahmed and his party — especially 
 Chiragh Ali, the " Maulvi," and Amir Ali, a judge of the 
 High Court of Calcutta — seek to bring Islam into fresh vogue by 
 recognising and adopting the sum total of Western knowledge, 
 
 1 A great deal has been made in the Muhammadan world of Mr. Quilliam's 
 Moslem propaganda in Liverpool. It has been loudly proclaimed, both in the 
 Punjab and in Muhammadan Bengal, that crowds of Englishmen were being 
 converted to Islam. The Sultan has even conferred upon Mr. Quilliam the dis- 
 tinguished title of a Sheikh-ul-Islam. English missionaries, for their own sake, 
 caused the most diligent inquiries to be made at Liverpool, and ascertained that 
 the entire membership of the adherents of the apostates was some eleven men, 
 half a dozen women, and a dozen children, mostly belonging to the very lowest 
 classes of the people, and dependent on Mr. Quilliam financially. His religious 
 services are a turbid and arbitrary medley of Christian and Muhammadan 
 elements, which no orthodox Moslem would have anything to do with. The 
 whole affair is humbug! — Cf. Indian Evangelical Review, 1 901, p. 119. 
 26 
 
402 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 particularly natural science and its allied branches of study. 
 They teach that reason alone is a sufficient guide. The Islam 
 of the last thirteen centuries is not the real Islam, but one built 
 up by Ulama, a scholarly theologian, who, they assert, com- 
 pletely misunderstood the spirit of the Koran and of tradition. 
 In consequence of this, the first converts of Muhammad soon 
 relapsed from the teachings of his holy religion into the folly 
 of the " times of ignorance." Accordingly, Sir Syed Ahmed's 
 teaching is termed " New Islam." His creed is, " Islam is 
 nature, nature is Islam " ; Divine revelation (in the orthodox 
 sense), prophecy, miracles, incarnation, and inspiration, are 
 therefore rejected. A prophet is a man peculiarly endowed 
 with a genius for the discovery and investigation of moral 
 and spiritual truth ; this special equipment constitutes his 
 " inspiration." Every message from God must be tested 
 rather by human reason than by any miracles of soi-disant 
 celestial origin. 
 
 It will easily be understood that teaching of this kind met 
 with violent opposition on the part of orthodox Muhammadan- 
 ism, for what else is it than the rationalisimis vulgaris in 
 Muhammadan garb. Nevertheless, Sir Syed Ahmed has 
 gained a considerable following, and founded a sect, the 
 members of which are termed by their opponents the Naturis 
 (from the English "nature") or Syed Ahmedis. Their 
 strong point is their College, which was founded by Sir Syed 
 at Aligarh in 1878, and which aims at becoming a great 
 Moslem university. The reform of education generally, and 
 particularly of girls' education, and other social aims are also 
 items in their programme, and eager attempts are made by 
 means of annual conferences held in the great towns to 
 promote these and similar objects. Sir Syed Ahmed died in 
 the year 1898. 
 
 Whilst the appearance of such a man is easily accounted for 
 by the collision between a fossilised Islamic civilisation and the 
 modern civilisation of the West, — being in himself an eloquent 
 testimony to the superiority of the latter, — Ghulam Ahmed of 
 Oadian, on the other hand, is a wild and confused mixture of 
 elements, an extraordinary plant of the marshes, grown in the 
 weed-covered labyrinth of Muhammadan theology, and at the 
 same time nurtured by the light and sun of Christianity. 
 Ghulam is a remarkable man. He writes clever books, and in 
 such elegant Urdu, Persian, and Arabic that he is able to 
 challenge his opponents in the most graceful Arabic literary 
 articles to admit or to disprove his divine mission ; besides this 
 he has also inaugurated an English magazine. The Review of 
 Religions^ the lengthy pages of which he fills almost single- 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 403 
 
 handed. He has not only read the Old and New Testaments 
 thoroughly, but is likewise acquainted with certain apocryphal 
 works such as, c.g.^ the " Gospel according to Barnabas," and 
 with novels such as that of the Russian author, Nicolas Notovitch, 
 The Unknoiv7i Life of Christ. But he lacks every atom of 
 critical discernment in estimating the relative worth and 
 credibility of these writings. He studies both Christian and 
 Muhammadan theology, yet falls a victim to the most astound- 
 ing and contradictory superstitions. In his pretensions no one 
 would term him modest. He claims to be the Christian 
 Messiah, returned according to His promise, and likewise the 
 promised Mahdi of the Muhammadans — at one and the same 
 time ! And it is really most remarkable to see how he justifies 
 such high assumptions. He does not pretend to be the same 
 Messiah as He who lived in Palestine nineteen hundred years 
 ago ; he merely maintains that he has come " in the spirit and 
 power of the Messiah" just as John the Baptist, to use the 
 Lord's own words, came " in the spirit and power of Elias." 
 He tells us Christians that our resurrection hope is erroneous, 
 Christ did not die on the cross, but after remaining there for a 
 few hours was taken down apparently dead ; the disciples 
 healed His wounds in a few days with some most wonderful 
 ointment, the " Marham-i-Isa," or "Jesus ointment," which is 
 still sold as a charm in India ; Jesus then proceeded to India, 
 where He died at Srinagar at the age of 120. He was buried 
 there in the Kan Yar Street, where the grave of " Yusasaf " {i.e. 
 of Yusa, Jesus, the Asaf (Hebrew), the gatherer, i.e. of the lost 
 sheep or in other words, of the ten lost tribes of Israel),^ is still 
 pointed out. Allah had first sent Moses the lawgiver to Israel, 
 then, about 1400 years later, the Messiah. Now in Deuteronomy 
 xviii. 18, a prophet like unto Moses is promised from among 
 his " brethren," who are, of course, the Ishmaelites ; this prophet 
 was Mahomet, the Moses of the Ishmaelites; thus, if Ishmael 
 were to receive a Moses, God must of course send them a 
 Messiah, 1400 years after Moses; and he, Ghulam, is that 
 Messiah. On the sixth day God created Adam ; now with God 
 a thousand years are as one day, consequently at the beginning 
 of the sixth period of a thousand years God must have created 
 the second Adam, and of course, he, Ghulam, is that second 
 Adam. Just as God placed Adam in a garden " towards the 
 east" (Gen. ii. 8), so only, as a matter of course, could the 
 second Adam appear in the east, i.e. in India. If any one should 
 further doubt the reliability of these statements, his very 
 
 ^ Local investigations have discovered that there does exist in the street 
 mentioned the grave of some modern Muhammadan saint, such as are found in 
 thousands all over the Muhammadan world. 
 
404 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 existence is proof conclusive enough. God has sent him in the 
 fulness of time, and therefore all prophecy must find its fulfil- 
 ment in him. And one has only to compare his life with that 
 of Jesus of Nazareth to see that he makes far greater claims to 
 Messiahship than He. " I wonder what people find so remark- 
 able in the Son of Mary that they should make him the Son of 
 God. Is it His miracles? Mine are greater than His. Were 
 His prophecies clear and true? I should be guilty of concealing 
 the truth did I not maintain that the prophecies given to me by 
 Almighty God far surpass, both in clearness, in power, and in 
 truth, the ambiguous predictions of Jesus. Are we to base His 
 Divinity on the words used concerning Him in the Gospels? I 
 swear by the Lord that the revealed words of God attesting my 
 high position are far weightier and far more laudatory than the 
 words of the Gospels relating to Jesus " {Review of Religions, 
 May 1902, p. 206). What, then, are the miracles of Mirza of 
 Qadian ? He can scarcely mean anything but his prophecies ; 
 here his favourite method has been to threaten all whom he 
 dislikes with an early death, and he has conducted himself in 
 this respect so indecently that the English Government finally 
 compelled him to sign a document in which he expressly 
 promised never again to threaten any man with God's wrath 
 and with instant dissolution ! But enough of these astounding 
 details, which we could go on repeating ad infinitum. 
 
 At first sight we are inclined to say that Ghulam was mad and 
 suffered from monomania, but Rev. Dr. Griswold, a Lahore 
 missionary, who has studied both the man and his writings most 
 thoroughly, and who also knows him personally, believes that 
 he was most honestly convinced of the truth of his mission, and 
 that he was likewise able to produce in his adherents the same 
 conviction. Besides, it must be remembered that he is merely 
 a sign of the times in Muhammadanism, within which alone he 
 has attained to renown and made disciples. All his attempts 
 to convince native Christians, or even Englishmen resident in 
 India, of the authenticity of his mission have miserably failed. 
 Considered as a product of North Indian Muhammadanism, 
 this Mirza is certainly a highly remarkable figure. In passing 
 we should notice that the Bible and the Christian faith have 
 already gained on the Muhammadans to such an extent that 
 they resort to these and similar eccentric attempts in order to 
 hold their own. We ought not to forget that Mirza has 
 throughout shown himself possessed by the most embittered 
 hatred for anything Christian, especially for Christian 
 missionaries, and has not even refrained from the impudence 
 of slandering in most despicable fashion Jesus, in whose spirit 
 and power he pretends to have come, and whose exact likeness 
 
THE LEAVEN AT WORK 405 
 
 (Masil-i-Masih, shadow of the Messiah) he originally loved to 
 be called.^ 
 
 Orthodox Muhammadanism has of course occupied a stand- 
 point of definite opposition to Mirza Ghulam and his followers. 
 His teaching transgresses at every point the accepted theology 
 of Islam. According to the new Census he has 11 13 male 
 followers above fifteen years of age. Dr. Griswold calculates 
 the entire sect at ten thousand souls at the very outside, assumes, 
 however, that it may yet increase considerably. Ghulam 
 Ahmed's recent death (1908) may prove a serious set-back to 
 the movement. 
 
 There are also other movements in orthodox Muhammadan- 
 ism, all of which are opposed to Christianity, and seek to 
 fortify themselves against its^attacks. In North India a " Society 
 for the Defence of Islam " has been founded. Simply with the 
 object of interrupting Christian work and working against it, it 
 opens elementary and intermediate schools, prints newspapers 
 and pamphlets, organises preaching tours, pays preachers, and 
 even promotes zenana visiting. 
 
 Wherever we look in India, whether at Hinduism or at 
 Islam, we find unrest and fermentation. The leaven of the 
 gospel and of Christian civilisation is at work in the stagnant 
 mass ; on all hands there is a stir and a commotion among the 
 dry bones. The far-reaching and profound effect produced by 
 Christianity upon the intellectual life of India is one of the 
 proofs of the real vitality of missions, and the fact that all these 
 movements have been set in motion by, and have developed 
 partly in connection with, Protestant missions and partly in 
 direct opposition thereto, is an overwhelming evidence of their 
 superiority. 
 
 '^ Indian Evangelical Review, 1903, pp. 322-384. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS— THE CHRISTIAN 
 CHURCH OF INDIA 
 
 I. Numerical Success 
 
 To tabulate the numerical results of missions is difficult on all 
 mission fields, but particularly so in India. That a new era 
 has here dawned in almost every department of life, in the 
 religious, the ethical, the political, and the social departments, 
 in philology, in literature, in education, and in other branches, 
 no one can entertain the least doubt. Still less would any one 
 doubt the fact that in the renaissance of all these varying 
 departments missions have taken a distinguished part, that in 
 many of them they have been the first pioneers. It is impos- 
 sible to write a detailed history of India in the nineteenth century 
 without encountering missionary work and great missionaries at 
 every step. But the department to which in this book we first 
 turn and where we most earnestly desire to ascertain results is 
 that of religion. For the great revolutions which are there being 
 prepared, for the incisive movements which have there come and 
 gone, and which must be regarded as directly or indirectly the 
 result of missionary work, we refer the reader to the sixth 
 chapter of this book. But the friends of missions want to know 
 more than this ; they demand figures showing the size of the 
 native church and the number of baptized converts and of 
 catechumens. In India, however, any such standard of measure- 
 ment is particularly inadequate, and in certain aspects of the 
 work it is almost misleading. In the higher castes and upper 
 strata of society enormous difficulties block the way of any one 
 desiring to embrace Christianity, and the taking of this decisive 
 step demands both heroic courage and uncommon energy 
 — ^just the very two virtues most seldom found united in 
 the Hindu. It will therefore be understood that there are 
 many in these particular classes of society who shrink from 
 making a profession of faith, who postpone it, and who for the 
 
 present rest content with a faith which may be very real to its 
 
 406 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 407 
 
 possessor and may be diligently nourished by the Word of 
 God. The descendants of Nicodemus, or " Borderers " as they 
 are called in India, are nowhere so numerous as on the Indian 
 mission field. On the other hand, among the lowest classes of 
 the people and the forest tribes, missions come as a means of 
 help in time of great distress, as a rescuer from hopeless degen- 
 eracy. They take nothing, they give everything — schooling to 
 neglected children, food, work, the means of existence, and a 
 more respectable social position to starving parents. For them 
 to embrace Christianity is easier and more seductive ; Christian 
 missions have had to stem the influx in order that undesirable 
 elements and such as are only moved by material considerations 
 may be kept out. It would be easy but unjust to compare the 
 numerical results in either case, and to describe the work 
 amongst one section of the community as fruitless and devoid of 
 all prospect of success, and that amongst the other section as 
 a veritable outpouring of the Holy Ghost, as a new Pentecost. 
 
 But we have no other standard upon which to proceed than 
 numerical statistics, and in our materialistic age reliable figures 
 are at any rate of considerable relative worth. Such figures we 
 have given at the close of each division in our historical survey 
 in Chapter III.; but we must now examine a little more closely 
 the reliability of these statistics. For this purpose we shall 
 limit ourselves to the last twenty-five years. Here we find 
 three entirely independent calculations at our disposal, the 
 Government Census, the Decennial Missionary Tables, and Dr. 
 Grundemann's statistics. Let us first give their respective 
 totals for India, exclusive of Ceylon and Burma: — 
 
 Government Decennial 
 Census. Tables. 
 
 Dr. Grundemann. 
 
 1881 .... ... 417.872 304,303 (for 1878). 
 
 1891 .... 573,753' 559,661 420,675 (for 1888). 
 
 1901 .... 825,466 854,867 776,562 (for 1898). 
 
 The difference in these figures is obviously great. Which 
 column may we accept as the most reliable? At first sight we 
 are tempted to prefer the Census figures. But one single 
 example will suffice to show what mistakes have crept into 
 this column even recently. According to the Census of 1891 
 there were 2,158,240 "scholars" and 675,357 " literates " under 
 fifteen years of age — a sum total of 2,833,597. According to 
 the Census of 1901 there was, notwithstanding the enormous 
 educational development which had taken place during the 
 
 ^ The Census Report for 1890 (p. 179) gives 584,307; from this number 83,189 
 evangelical Christians in Burma have been deducted, and 72,635 in Travancore and 
 Cochin added. 
 
40 8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 preceding decade, only a total in both columns of 2,129,439; 
 that is to say, 700,000 less, whereas we ought to expect as many 
 more. This is clearly a Census mistake of over a million, and 
 we cannot suppose that the religious Census taken mostly by 
 non-Christians or Muhammadans will be more reliable than this 
 " Education Census." We shall therefore not take it as our 
 authority, but merely use it for purposes of comparison. Dr. 
 Grundemann is a missionary specialist in statistics, and he 
 bases all his calculations on what is relatively the safest 
 material to go upon, to wit, the annual reports of the various 
 Societies. Our objection to his data, however, is that he in- 
 variably chooses a minimum which is absolutely beyond all 
 manner of doubt instead of striking a probable average, and he 
 leaves most of the lesser Societies out of count altogether. His 
 figures are therefore everywhere valuable, but their sum totals 
 are too small. The Decennial Missionary Tables are prepared 
 at the close of every decade for the Decennial Conference by a 
 local committee at Calcutta, and are based on schedules sent 
 round to all the Societies at work in India. They are not 
 faultless, as we shall see, but they contain what is relatively the 
 best material at our disposal. We have, therefore, in all figures 
 given previously, regarded them as reliable.^ Though their 
 sum-totals also are not so trustworthy as we could wish, yet 
 they are essentially indicative of the progressive development 
 of the Indian Missionary Church. According to the Decennial 
 Missionary Tables there were in India : — 
 
 Protestant Christians 
 Communicants among\ 
 
 the foregoing / 
 
 Churches or Congrega-) 
 
 tions / 
 
 Ordained Native) 
 
 Christians J 
 
 Confining ourselves to the first and, for us, most important 
 set of figures, we see that during the period 1851-1861 the 
 increase was 54 per cent.; 1861-1871, 54 per cent.; 1871-1881, 
 87 per cent.; 1881-I890, 34 per cent. ; and in 1890-1900, 53 per 
 cent. When we remember that during the decade 1871-1881 
 there was an extraordinarily large increase in consequence of 
 the terrible famine of 1 876-1 879, and that during the following 
 decade, 1881-1891, there ensued, on the contrary, a very 
 necessary season of sifting and winnowing, that in the two 
 
 ^ For detailed list of numbers belonging to the various branches of the Christian 
 Church in India, cf. Appendix N. 
 
 I85I. 
 
 1861. 
 
 1871. 
 
 1881. 
 
 1890. 
 
 1900. 
 
 91,092 
 
 138,731 
 
 324,258 
 
 417,572 
 
 559,661 
 
 854,867 
 
 14,661 
 
 24,976 
 
 52,816 
 
 113,325 
 
 182,722 
 
 301,699 
 
 267 
 
 971 
 
 2,278 
 
 3,650 
 
 4,863 
 
 5,362 
 
 21 
 
 97 
 
 225 
 
 461 
 
 797 
 
 893 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 409 
 
 decades taken together, however, the whole increase of about 
 no per cent, is equivalent to twice 55 per cent., we find that 
 throughout the last half- century an approximately regular 
 increase of 54 per cent, per decade has been maintained. 
 
 2. The Component Elements of a Protestant Native 
 Church 
 
 Both to obtain a just conception of these masses of 
 Christians, as well as to gain some insight into the internal 
 development of missions, it is of importance to analyse the 
 component elements of the Native Churches. Their members 
 are in the main drawn from five different strata of society. 
 Away back in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century 
 individual Hindus and Muhammadans had joined all the mis- 
 sionary societies. Though we cannot go so far as to say there 
 were no representatives of the upper classes nor even of the 
 Brahmans amongst them, yet the majority were certainly drawn 
 from the lower and the lowest strata of the people. Often 
 enough they were people who through some misdeed or inad- 
 vertency had lost caste, and who now sought a refuge amongst 
 the Christians. Frequently they were detached units of the 
 people, such as servants, hawkers, travelling mendicants, and 
 occasionally sepoys, who, at a distance from home and people, 
 were more easily accessible to the influences of the foreign 
 teaching. Almost invariably they had previously possessed 
 either no assured means of livelihood, or they lost it on becom- 
 ing Christians. The missionaries, who regarded these first fruits 
 with the most maternal tenderness, and in whose eyes the 
 sacrifices made by the new converts loomed infinitely larger 
 than their necessities, supported these tiny and strangely 
 assorted groups of members with the greatest conscientiousness. 
 They (the converts) were generally allowed to encamp in the 
 missionary compounds or on plots of ground acquired by the 
 missionaries in their immediate vicinity. As far as possible 
 some little employment was provided for each one whereby he 
 might gain the necessary means of subsistence ; his children 
 were reared more or less at the expense of the mission, and in 
 times of distress or sickness charity was dispensed with no 
 reluctant hand. The missionary was the " Ma-bap " or " mother- 
 father " of the Christian community, and this latter was generally 
 in entire financial, social, and intellectual dependence upon the 
 mission. The " barrack system " is the name ironically applied 
 to these patriarchal times by Indian Christians themselves at a 
 later period. 
 
4IO HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 In the famine of 1837 missionaries first gathered together 
 on a large scale children who had been made orphans by the 
 famine, and erected orphanages for them, a number of which, 
 such as those at Sigra near Benares and at Sikandra near Agra, 
 soon acquired considerable fame. It lay in the very nature of 
 the case that within a decade of the famine, at the very outside, 
 the education of the famine orphans was accomplished. 
 
 The houses were then filled with the children of Christian 
 parents until another famine brought in fresh hosts of orphans. 
 Particularly in North India, where missionary success was 
 nearly always very sparse, the idea often presented itself, of 
 developing reliable communities of native Christians from these 
 charges, often entrusted to missions in their tenderest years, 
 and thus placing before the eyes of the heathen an object 
 lesson on a large scale of the Christian life as embodied in an 
 entire community. At the same time a possibility would be 
 opened up of educating for missionary service a thoroughly 
 trained staff of helpers. During the last sixty years of the 
 past century there have always been several thousands of 
 children in mission orphanages, but only during the great 
 famines at the close of the century, 1896-1897 and 1899-1900, 
 were orphanages founded in large numbers. In 1901 Dennis 
 reported one hundred and fifteen orphanages with 8960 boys and 
 girls resident therein.^ Two years later it was calculated that 
 25,000 orphan children were under the protection of evangelical 
 missions.2 What missions have done for these masses of children, 
 who without their aid must surely have perished, is written upon 
 the red-letter pages of the annals of Indian missionary history. 
 
 The task missions had undertaken in connection with these 
 children was a more difficult and complicated one than had at 
 first been supposed. Of course during periods of famine 
 Hinduism endeavours to succour its own adherents; and in 
 general it is only the children of the poorest and most degraded 
 sections of the community who fall into the hands of the 
 missionaries. In addition to the fact that owing to centuries 
 of oppression these classes are generally dull and obtuse, most 
 of the children have undergone the most terrible privations 
 before entering the orphanages, by which they have suffered 
 both bodily and mentally, and often spiritually also. They 
 present an educational task as difficult as it is thankless. 
 The children are generally baptized on their admittance ; that 
 certainly guarantees a solid Christian training, but at the same 
 time it makes missions responsible for them during the rest of 
 their lives, for thereby they definitely are cut off from the caste 
 system. They must remain Christians, or they are socially and 
 
 ^ Centennial Survey , p. 216. -Intelligencer, 1903, p. 722; 1902, p. 19. 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 411 
 
 morally lost ! Is it to be marvelled at that under such circum- 
 stances a large percentage of these orphan children became 
 " stones of offence " to the missionaries, and not infrequently a 
 disgrace to the missionary cause? The missionaries were of 
 course obliged to assume the part of both father and mother to 
 all the children they received, and also to conceirn themselves 
 with the maintenance and advancement of those who had out- 
 grown the orphanages. And if, as we well know, the character 
 of the Indian people is one tending in a high degree to 
 dependence, parasitism, and subordination to a stronger will, 
 how were these hosts of children to be taught to stand on their 
 own feet independent of the missionaries, and to earn their 
 bread with the sweat of their brow, especially when they had 
 in missions such an immeasurably rich " Ma-bap." As far as 
 possible they were brought up to serve as helpers in church and 
 school, and it is largely owing to these orphanages that most 
 North Indian missions have an excellent native staff. But in 
 view of the extraction of the children, we must not be astonished 
 when we find that only a small percentage possess the capacity 
 for such advanced training. Attempts were made to interest 
 them in agriculture, as most of them came from rural districts. 
 Christian agricultural villages were founded ; the best known 
 of these are Sikandra near Agra, Basharatpur and Sterapur 
 near Gorakhpur, and Annfield in the Dehra Dun.^ But this 
 " village system," whereby the native Christians lived on mission 
 land and in financial dependence upon missions, was far from 
 
 ^ The Christian village of Sigra near Benares was built within the missionary 
 compound, and thus resembled the " barrack " system. The village of Muirabad 
 outside the gates of Allahabad was a noble gift from Sir William Muir, the devoted 
 ruler of the United Provinces, and was principally intended for Christians 
 employed in the offices and factories of the adjoining city. The inhabitants of 
 the Christian village of Sharanpur near Nasik were occupied with cart-making 
 and similar labour. In quite recent times the idea of transplanting poor 
 Christians into agricultural villages has been taken up with great energy ; the 
 Irish Presbyterians in Gujarat and Kathiawar, the Church Missionary Society in 
 the Punjab, at Clarkabad, JNIontgomerywala, Isapur, and Batemanabad, and the 
 United Free Church of Scotland in the Chingleput district at Andreiapuram or, 
 according to Rev. A. Andrews, Melrosapuram, carry on this kind of work on a 
 large scale ; whilst the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel around Trichino- 
 poly, the Leipzig Missionary Society in the country districts of Madras, the 
 Herrmannsburg Society, the Breklum Society, and others, are also engaged to a 
 certain extent. The Madras Conference of 1902 warmly recommended this branch 
 of labour to the consideration of all missionary societies {Report of the Madras 
 Decennial Conference of igo2, p. 146). When the Government places large and 
 not wholly barren tracts of land at the disposal of such an enterprise, as has been 
 done with most encouraging promptitude in the Punjab, the matter is of course quite 
 practicable. But when this is not the case, the heavy cost of acquiring land and 
 the uncertainty of even moderate interest being yielded on the capital invested 
 present almost insuperable difficulties — as the Leipzig Society in particular has 
 found out in the Madras district. The religious and moral advantages of this system, 
 and its dangers too, are just the same to-day as they were about the middle of the 
 last centuiy. 
 
412 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 being conducive to the development of independent Christians 
 possessed of Christian backbone, and after the children by 
 their Christian education in the orphanages had been estranged 
 from the surrounding population, they became in these Christian 
 villages wholly self-contained foreign bodies, devoid of all 
 vital attraction for the heathen by whom they were surrounded. 
 
 Attempts have also been made to train the heathen in 
 handicrafts. But owing to the rigid caste system of Hinduism, 
 only a limited number of crafts are available for those not 
 belonging to a caste. Regarding Christians as outside the pale, 
 the heathen simply refuse to have work done by them. There 
 remain therefore only two practical expedients. Either missions 
 must themselves make up their minds to instal manual and 
 mechanical trades on a large scale, — the method adopted with 
 great skill and success in Malabar and Kanara by the Basle 
 Missionary Society, — or trades and occupations must be chosen 
 which depend on the ever increasingly numerous English 
 element in the country, posts as copyists and secretaries, type- 
 setting and printing, working in European manufactories, and 
 so on. Down to the Mutiny in 1857 the administration of North 
 India fought shy of appointing native Christians to posts on 
 their staff, to the disadvantage of the Christians and also of the 
 Government, Since then things have improved, but even to-day 
 native Christians have a difficulty in asserting themselves in 
 the European service, for the Hindus and Muhammadans 
 generally strain every nerve to keep them out. 
 
 And what of those who were incompetent both for the 
 missionary service and any kind of handicraft? They were 
 and still remain the missionaries' greatest care. Frequently 
 they sought to earn their bread by entering the service of 
 Englishmen or other Europeans, but in a position of such 
 temptation, often the only Christians amongst a numerous and 
 adverse body of heathen servants, under masters who were 
 probably anything but decided Christians, and who further 
 shared the almost universal prejudice against them, they seldom 
 stood firm. They were then discharged with ignominy, and the 
 Europeans had a further proof that " Indian Christians are no 
 good," and in the end nothing was left for missionaries to 
 do but to feed these their unfortunate children themselves ! 
 And yet the work of self-sacrifice and devotion among 
 famine orphans has been on the whole richly rewarded. 
 Such children, along with their children and children's 
 children, form the nucleus of nearly all native churches in the 
 cities of Bengal and the United Provinces. And the director 
 of one of the largest and most famous orphanages, that of 
 Sikandra near Agra, assured the author that, after careful 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 413 
 
 personal investigation, he was in a position to state that only 
 very few of the families of former members of his own institu- 
 tion had gone astray, whereas the majority occupied respectable 
 positions and formed a section of society continually and 
 creditably increasing in intelligence and moral force, especially 
 in the second and third generations. 
 
 In view of the immoderately large number of famine orphans 
 now in mission orphanages, the question of their education 
 until they are able to obtain an independent livelihood occupies 
 more than ever the minds of the missionaries. They are all 
 united in the opinion that under prevailing conditions industrial 
 occupations are the most desirable ; " industrial missions," 
 therefore, are the order of the day. Energetic Scotchmen have 
 founded a "Scottish Missionary Industrial Company" which 
 has e.g. taken over and developed the missionary printing 
 presses in Ajmer and Poona belonging to the United Free 
 Church of Scotland. A second " Industrial Missionary Aid 
 Society" (founded in 1897) maintains a capitally equipped 
 carpet-weaving establishment at Ahmadnagar, principally on 
 behalf of the orphans who are under the care of the American 
 Board ; its main objects are, however: (i) To be an information 
 bureau, able to assist all missionaries in the choice of suitable 
 branches of industry, the procuring of all necessary instruments, 
 etc. ; (2) to be an agency for the sale of all articles produced in 
 these workshops. For the last-named purpose it has opened 
 various shops and depots in Bombay and London. Its founder 
 and director is Mr. H. W. Fry of London, But far beyond the 
 sphere of influence of this Missionary Aid Society, which after 
 all does not represent any very large amount of capital, 
 industrial workshops and schools are being built in connection 
 with nearly every mission, from the Himalayas in the far north 
 to the most southern point of the island of Ceylon. They 
 compose, along with schools, zenana work, and medical missions, 
 an essential part of modern missionary organisation. In 
 distinction to the other branches of missionary labour, however, 
 they are almost exclusively intended for the education and 
 uplifting of the younger members of the Christian community. 
 For this reason we have considered them not in the fifth, but in 
 the seventh chapter of this work. 
 
 Whereas in the first thirty years of the nineteenth century 
 members of the highest castes were met with amongst the con- 
 verts only at rare intervals, considerable numbers of Brahmans 
 and other members of the religious and intellectual aristocracy 
 of the country were converted to Christianity after 1830, under 
 the magnetic influence of Dr. Duff, and soon afterwards also in 
 connection with the mission colleges everywhere founded in 
 
414 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 accordance with his advice and example. Forty-eight such 
 conversions resulted from Duff's direct influence. The 
 Banerjeas and the Chatterjeas, the Mukerjeas and the 
 Dutts, the Ghoses and the Chakarbuttys and others formed 
 an entirely new element in Indian Christendom. This class of 
 convert has never, thank God, died out ; and conversions from 
 the intellectual aristocracy of Muhammadanism have also taken 
 place. The well-known Imad-ud-Din, who died in 1903, 
 mentioned in a paper sent to the Chicago Parliament of 
 Religions in 1893 the names of some ninety distinguished 
 Muhammadans who had been converted to Christianity. This 
 aristocracy of brain and of heart, who have almost all given up 
 family and property, position and prospects, for the sake of 
 Christ, are the veritable pillars of Indian Christendom. Never- 
 theless we cannot but recognise that their adhesion to missions, 
 particularly in the early decades of the century, was a distinct 
 source of difficulty. That far-reaching dependence upon missions 
 in which the native churches found themselves under the 
 " barrack " and " village " systems, was, naturally enough, not 
 altogether pleasing to these great free spirits ; they were rather 
 disposed to interfere on behalf of these " downtrodden " ones, 
 and to reproach missions with keeping the native Christians in 
 leading strings and neglecting their education in manly 
 independence. They were the natural leaders and pastors of 
 the native churches ; yet they were the very ones to introduce 
 endless complications into the vexed question — already difficult 
 enough — of the regular pastoral oversight of these congrega- 
 tions, by demanding (and their demand was just), on account 
 of their past history and position, salaries that the poverty- 
 stricken native churches were quite unable to pay. They were 
 the most valuable allies of the missionaries from over-seas in 
 the intellectual warfare against Hinduism and Islam, and many 
 of them accomplished great things in research into these 
 systems of religion as well as in actual conflict with them ; we 
 need only recall the names of Nehemiah Goreh, Imad-ud-Din, 
 and Thakurdas. But for this very reason it was most difficult 
 to define to their general satisfaction their spiritual and temporal 
 relationship both to the missionaries and to the native churches. 
 Such difficulties, however, even when they led to passing mis- 
 understandings and heated controversy at the great Mission 
 Conferences, only presented themselves to be overcome. With 
 this contingent from the intellectual aristocracy of the country, 
 missions publicly made good their claim upon every class of 
 society in the country, and showed how the most brilliantly 
 gifted minds of India might be of use in the service of the 
 Master and in the building up of His kingdom. 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 415 
 
 In the fourth missionary period, 1857-1880, a new factor 
 pressed into the foreground of the missionary situation, and for 
 a quarter of a century attracted universal attention, namely, the 
 hill and forest tribes, the aborigines of India. Since the 
 famous days of the Tinnevelly Mission (i 820-1 845) no such 
 numerous and promising conversions had been seen as now 
 occurred amongst the Kols and the Santals. And what was 
 particularly cheering was the fact that the task here presented 
 to the missionaries corresponded exactly with the ideal of 
 missionary work which, based upon experience in Africa and 
 Polynesia, had been formed in the homeland. Simple agricul- 
 tural and hunting tribes knocked at the door of the Christian 
 Church and besought admission ; congregations, churches, 
 schools, a staff of teachers and preachers, all could be inaugur- 
 ated in the greatest simplicity, from the very bottom rung of 
 the ladder to the top ; the powers and abilities already existent 
 in the newly received converts could at once be brought into 
 play. All the clumsy apparatus of Indian missionary organisa- 
 tion — educational, medical, zenana, industrial missions, etc. — 
 could be dispensed with. And it was precisely in this limitation 
 to forces that lay ready to their hand that the highest genius 
 was manifested. It is noteworthy that, as a general rule. 
 Englishmen and Americans have had no great measure of 
 success in carrying on missions to aboriginal tribes (to see this 
 we have only to compare the work of the S.P.G. in Chota 
 Nagpur with that of Gossner's Mission, or the C.M.S. with the 
 " Indian Home Mission " among the Santals) ; they bring to bear 
 upon the simpler conditions of work the unwieldy institutional 
 apparatus in use in other parts of the country, and therewith 
 they greatly increase the difficulty of their task. It is a 
 question still needing solution as to how far it is necessary 
 to labour for the social and economic uplifting of these abori- 
 gines, after bringing them the benefits of Christianity. The 
 two most active missions in this field, Gossner's Mission to the 
 Kols and the Scandinavian Santal Mission, are inclined to keep 
 their adherents simply in the position they have inherited from 
 their fathers, and thus to enable them to earn their daily bread ; 
 they take special care that all further education and instruc- 
 tion given to their teachers and preachers shall not unfit them 
 for that station in life in which they have previously been 
 brought up. 
 
 We have already pointed out in our historical survey that 
 the main body of the Indian Christians converted in more 
 recent times is either from the lower strata of the lowest Sudra 
 castes or from among the outcastes. Although to an unskilled 
 European eye the distinction between these two divisions may 
 
4i6 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 seem of little worth, it is yet of considerable importance for a 
 right apprehension of Indian conditions of work. To the lowest 
 Sudra castes belong the Shanans of Tinnevelly and Travancore, 
 the Malas of Central and North Telugu Land, the Tiyans and 
 Billawas of Malabar and South Kanara, and the Mazhabi 
 Sikhs in the Punjab; amongst the outcastes we find the Pariahs 
 of the Central and North Tamil districts, the Madigas of the 
 Telugu district, the Mahars and Mangs of the Maratha country, 
 the Chamars, Mehtars, and Churahs of North India, etc. It 
 is one of the most attractive tasks of the missionary historian 
 to investigate how, now here now there, one of these groups is 
 laid hold of and gripped by Christian missions, how to a greater 
 or lesser degree mass movements follow, and how these 
 movements come to a standstill almost as suddenly as they 
 begin. Here, however, our only duty is to inquire into the 
 nature of the task presented by work amongst these inferior 
 castes, particularly in the case of mass movements. There was 
 a time — in the early days of the Shanan Mission in Tinnevelly 
 for instance, or during the revival amongst vast masses of the 
 Madigas and Malas after the great famine of 1 876-1 879 — when 
 one was inclined, particularly in enthusiastic missionary circles 
 at home, to regard these movements as occasions for triumph 
 at new outpourings of the Holy Ghost ; but out on the mission- 
 field itself a more sober spirit, a spirit better able to appreciate 
 the actual condition of things, is now almost universally pre- 
 valent. These masses of people have been mainly attracted 
 to the missionaries for social or mundane reasons. After 
 centuries of merciless oppression by the upper castes, who 
 regard all education and civilisation as their own particular 
 privilege and keep the lower castes in total ignorance or in a 
 barren gloomy demon worship, these lower castes are beginning 
 to perceive that a new day is breaking for them, and that 
 missions are benevolently stretching out a hand to lead them 
 into a state of existence worthy of rational creatures. If the 
 great motto of missions be, " The poor have the Gospel preached 
 unto them," the salvation of the offscourings of Indian society 
 is a task worthy of the humble followers of a self-denying 
 Master. Certainly it is a task beset with thorns ; in far the 
 greater number of cases it is impossible to make good citizens 
 of these Pariah Christians. Even when they have been baptized 
 so much of the physical and moral filth of their sombre past 
 generally adheres to them that critics have an easy task in 
 emptying the vials of their scorn upon these Pariah missions and 
 their " rice Christians." Missionaries, too, know well what 
 dangers these mass movements hold in store for them. 
 Although the motives of the converts are principally of a 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 417 
 
 social kind, it is only possible for missions to afford them a 
 limited measure of assistance. If the help they expect be not 
 rendered, they are soon dissatisfied and turn away ; what help 
 they do actually receive, they consider as the natural reward 
 for their profession of Christianity, and proffer no thanks what- 
 ever for it. Should such aid ameliorate their social position, 
 they soon become impertinent and supercilious towards the 
 castes that were formerly above them. Mass movements also 
 render increasingly difficult the unremitting task of carefully 
 instructing the individual ; the women are perhaps overlooked, 
 special spiritual oversight is neglected, and much of the leaven 
 of heathenism, both with regard to ideas and to manners, is 
 allowed to enter the Church.^ It is a fruitful subject for dis- 
 cussion in missionary circles, whether it is wise to proletariatise 
 Indian Christendom too greatly by too large an influx of Pariah 
 congregations, and thereby to render Christianity wholly de- 
 spicable and unacceptable to the higher classes as the religion 
 of the Pariah. On the other hand, owing to the well-known lack 
 of will-power in the Hindu, it is much easier for him to become 
 a Christian in company with many others than if he had to 
 take the weighty step alone : great numerical results are only 
 possible in mass movements. 
 
 Missionaries cannot and ought not to leave the masses who 
 have joined them in the dull depression and intellectual sterility 
 of their earlier heathen condition. What are they then to re- 
 quire of these people, unused to every kind of mental activity, 
 who have never had a school training, before they permit them 
 to be baptized ? To how great an extent and in what particular 
 ways may or ought missions to work for the social uplifting of 
 these masses ? When these questions first presented themselves 
 in the Tinnevelly Mission and in the religious movement in the 
 Krishnagar district of Bengal, missionaries thought the simplest 
 and most effective solution of the problem was to erect 
 elementary and secondary schools, to pass through them, 
 largely at the cost of the mission, as many boys and girls as 
 possible who appeared to possess any degree of ability, and 
 then to employ these scholars either in the service of the 
 mission or in specially created and lucrative posts in the lower 
 branches of the civil service. But after half a century's experi- 
 ence one is inclined to doubt whether after all it is a good 
 thing to elevate so many belonging to one particular social 
 grade above that grade. With the large funds generously 
 placed at its disposal by the allied Industrial Missionary Aid 
 Society, the Basle Missionary Society first took the step of 
 creating employment on a large scale for its catechumens and 
 
 "^ Report of Bombay Decennial Missionary Conference for iSgs, p. 567. 
 27 
 
41 8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 native Christians by opening factories. In various parts of the 
 country an attempt has also been made to provide employment 
 that shall be in harmony with Indian customs by training the 
 native Christians as small farmers on their own allotments (cf, 
 p. 411, note). But for this large monetary funds, very com- 
 petent and reliable overseers, and patient skill in adapting one- 
 self to the truly novel conditions of Indian agricultural life, are 
 needed. The experiments that have been made in this direc- 
 tion up to the present are not, on the whole, encouraging. 
 Nowadays the question is being diligently considered, both in 
 North and South India, as to whether some industries or handi- 
 crafts cannot be discovered which, while not demanding too 
 large an outlay of capital and of unwieldy plant, may prove the 
 foundation on which to base a self-supporting and independent 
 order of society consisting entirely of Christian handicraftsmen. 
 We ought not to fail to understand, however, that owing to the 
 superiority of our education to that of the heathen world, missions 
 are in danger, to use the words of Rufus Anderson, that 
 enlightened American Missionary Secretary, " of losing sight of 
 the spiritual aims which are their sole raison d'etre by the inter- 
 mixture of too many views and methods of Western civilisation, 
 of too much agricultural and textile training," etc. 
 
 Still, if it is the indubitable paternal duty of missions to 
 render possible by domestic equipment and preparation of this 
 kind an independent existence for thousands of famine orphans, 
 missions have also a similar responsibility towards the otherwise 
 mercilessly downtrodden outcastes who have come under their 
 protection through baptism. But the spiritual character of their 
 work, which is their sole source of strength, should never be 
 lost sight of, and they ought ever to remember that all this 
 kind of effort for the raising of the social standing of the 
 people is for them only the means to an end, and not the end 
 itself. 
 
 We shall not attempt to pass judgment on the native 
 churches of India either from the point of view of the com- 
 plaints and reproaches cast up against them by critics and 
 opponents, or yet from that of the rightful estimate that should 
 be taken of their religious and moral qualifications. The 
 criticisms of opponents are the missionaries' crown of thorns. 
 They know full well how many are the weak points in their 
 work; they also know that just those native Christians with 
 whom civil servants and globe-trotters come most into contact 
 — the servants in European houses, the obtrusive Pariah parvenus 
 in the large towns — may as often as not be described as the 
 bastards, the prodigal sons, of missions. On the other hand, 
 the conditions under which the various groups of native 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 419 
 
 Christians live are so diverse that a just verdict can only be 
 passed upon them by carefully considering the pit from whence 
 they were digged, as well as the environment in which they 
 at present find themselves. We may perhaps be permitted to 
 refer briefly to three points where missions, in spite of many 
 isolated blunders, have attained brilliant results in the attempts 
 on a large scale which they have made for the uplifting of the 
 people. 
 
 Scarcely any mission has been so keenly criticised by both 
 friend and foe alike as the work of the Church Missionary 
 Society in the Krishnagar district. And in spite of all, the fact 
 remains that the present, the third generation of Christians, has 
 developed to such an extent in intelligence and general ability 
 under the conscientious care of the missionaries that the re- 
 stricted conditions of life which satisfied their ancestors no 
 longer satisfy them, and a very considerable emigration to 
 Calcutta and neighbourhood is constantly taking place. I was 
 told in Krishnagar that half of all the Protestant Christians in 
 the native churches of Calcutta were immigrants from Krish- 
 nagar, who are earning a comfortable livelihood. At Muirabad, 
 the prosperous Christian village near Allahabad, I expressed 
 astonishment at the evident tokens of the easy circumstances of 
 its inhabitants, and I was told that the second and third genera- 
 tions of those Christians who had been brought up in mission 
 orphanages almost invariably occupied respectable and lucrative 
 positions in life ; also that the bloodthirsty outbreak of the 
 quarrelsome Maravas against the Shanans in Tinnevelly and 
 Madura in the summer of 1899 had its real source in the 
 prosperity and growing intelligence of the Shanans, who under 
 the superintendence of the missionaries had made such immense 
 progress both intellectually and economically. It is an en- 
 couraging sign that native Christians are themselves beginning 
 by mutual insurance to protect themselves against poverty or 
 sudden disaster. In the C.M.S. congregations at Madras 
 there has existed since 1884 a "Madras Native Christian 
 Provident Fund," with a capital of some 34,000 rupees, the 653 
 members of which assure by regular payments an annuity for 
 themselves or those dependent upon them, or a sum payable at 
 death ; during the last twenty-one years over ^^4660 has been 
 paid out of this fund to the widows and orphans of Christians. 
 At Calcutta there is a Mutual Assurance Society for Christians 
 with a considerably larger capital, connected with the Bhowani- 
 pur Mission of the London Missionary Society. 
 
420 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 3. Native Agents 
 
 That foreign missionaries would have to train up and appoint 
 a staff of native teachers as auxiliaries was patent even to the 
 veterans of the Danish Mission, and they made several valuable 
 essays in this direction. They had at that time no training 
 college. Missionaries trained their Q.gQ.nts privatim. Christian 
 Fried rich Schwartz in particular showed both wisdom and great 
 skill in work of this kind. Few, however, were allowed to 
 proceed as far as ordination, and none but Sudras in any case. 
 With the extension of missionary enterprise since the beginning 
 of the nineteenth century, the need for numerous native agents 
 has become more imperative. On this matter, however, there 
 have been entertained the most varied opinions and the most 
 conflicting views. In the early decades we find the tendency 
 to employ as many converts as possible in missionary service ; 
 on the one hand, because the progress of missionary activity 
 demanded an ever greater number of native helpers acquainted 
 with the languages and customs of the country, and on the 
 other, because those who owing to their conversion had been 
 thrown out of their previous situations thus had created for them 
 a new position which was both highly suitable and at the same 
 time conducive to their intellectual development. Great pains 
 were taken with their training, and several schools for catechists 
 were established. In some of these a comprehensive syllabus 
 was drawn up, Greek and Hebrew being taught as the original 
 languages of the Bible, and the language generally chosen for 
 the conveyance of instruction was English. But ordination and 
 the comparatively independent position gained thereby was 
 granted only with the greatest reluctance. In 185 1, over 
 against 493 catechists and preachers, there were under all the 
 societies at work in India only twenty-one ordained native 
 pastors ! Towards the middle of the century, first in unattached 
 missions, then gradually throughout the whole mission field, the 
 view became prevalent that Indian Christendom ought to 
 provide adequately for its own pastoral oversight, and that this 
 ought to be so arranged as that the support of the preachers 
 should impose no intolerable burden upon the native churches. 
 Wherever this view prevailed the demands made of catechists 
 with regard to education were modified : Greek and Latin as well 
 as a number of dogmatic subjects were thrown overboard, 
 instruction was given in the vernacular, and an attempt was 
 made to preserve the catechists' sense of nationality as far as 
 possible intact. Men trained on these lines were now ordained 
 in large numbers, so that the native churches might be sufficiently 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIOxNS 421 
 
 provided with pastors. But the missionaries' need for thoroughly 
 trained assistants in their direct missionary work told heavily 
 against this more simple method. The man who attempted a 
 discussion with either a Hindu or a Muhammadan at a mela or 
 in the bazaar was as good as done for if his intellectual equip- 
 ment were not equal or superior to that of his adversary ; and 
 such an equipment means not only a thorough knowledge of 
 the Scriptures but also an intimate acquaintance with the 
 sacred literatures of his opponents, where possible in the original 
 languages, and sufficient theological and dialectic training to 
 measure his lance against their systems of religion. Further, it 
 lay in the very nature of things that converts from high castes 
 who had only found the Pearl of Great Price after long and sore 
 conflict should themselves burn with desire to commend this 
 great treasure to their fellow-countrymen ; and that as educated 
 men they not only possessed the ability to profit by, but like- 
 wise might equitably claim a thorough theological training. 
 And the churches in the large towns, the members of which 
 were ever increasing in intelligence and culture, needed pastors 
 of sound and comprehensive education to enable them in- 
 tellectually to vindicate their position in the midst of the 
 heathendom which surged around them on every side. On the 
 other hand, it was a serious matter to give too highly scientific a 
 training to native agents. " Too far uplifted above the average 
 intellectual plane of their fellow-countrymen, they began to lust 
 after more cultured hearers than were to be found in the 
 villages, and after higher salaries than could there be obtained. 
 They were unwilling to be stationed as agents in obscure places, 
 amongst an ignorant people of low caste, and only too often 
 they would not suffer the missionary veterans to address to 
 them either counsel or remonstrance. In some places, too, they 
 fell before the temptation to engage in worldly occupations, 
 and in this way became wholly lost to the mission." So 
 writes Rufus Anderson. There were thus, as a matter of 
 fact, many widely divergent views and motives regarding the 
 development of the native pastorate, and we need not be sur- 
 prised to find that this development has assumed the most 
 varying forms in different parts of the mission field. 
 
 We will trace the development in one typical mission, that 
 of the Church Missionary Society in the Madras Presidency ; 
 it is specially instructive as regards the variations that have 
 occurred in this particular branch of work. The Church 
 Missionary Society entered this sphere by taking over the work 
 of the Danish Mission at Tinnevelly. The leaders of that 
 mission, and in particular Schwartz, as we have already 
 mentioned, had trained their assistants privatim, and had 
 
42 2 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ordained the best among them. With these helpers they had 
 obtained on the whole satisfactory results ; they were men of 
 great spiritual acumen, men of zeal, circumspection, and spiritual 
 energy. Something of the spirit of the Danish veterans had 
 entered into them. But there were only a few of them, and it 
 needed the personality of a missionary wholly devoted to his 
 calling to exercise an influence of this kind upon the native 
 assistants. When under Rhenius' energetic and competent 
 direction the mass movement towards Christianity spread 
 through hundreds of Shanan villages, a need was immediately 
 felt for large numbers of native helpers, so that a pastor might 
 be appointed to take charge of the churches and schools if 
 possible in every village, but at any rate in every group of 
 villages. This was only possible with the aid of training 
 colleges ; at Palamcottah, therefore, Rhenius, aided by his 
 colleague B. Schmid, opened a seminary for catechists, and 
 tenaciously maintained it in spite of all opposition presented 
 by the caste spirit among a number of students living together 
 in this manner. From this training college the high school 
 system of Palamcottah was gradually developed, a high school, 
 a boarding school, and separate training colleges for school 
 teachers and for catechists ; the intention was, on the one hand, 
 to provide the teachers of the future with the rudiments of a 
 good solid education ; on the other, to give them direct pre- 
 paration for their work in school and in the pulpit. Only 
 the most approved among the catechists were admitted to 
 ordination, and this was done reluctantly ; down to the year 
 1849 but seven natives had been ordained on the entire field 
 of the Church Missionary Society in India. When other fields 
 of work at Madras, Travancore, and in Telugu Land were taken 
 over in the Madras Presidency by the same Society, it was an 
 easy matter to institute a uniform system of preparation for 
 candidates for ordination. To this end a Theological Seminary 
 was built at Madras in 1838, under the superintendence of Rev. 
 Jos. H. Gray. Through this college all desirous of ordination 
 had to pass ; only the lower grades of elementary school teachers 
 and village catechists were to be trained on the various mission 
 stations. This centralisation was made all the easier by the 
 fact that since 1835 Madras had been the seat of a bishopric, 
 and that according to Anglican ideas any examination confer- 
 ring a right to ordination must be conducted by a bishop, who 
 alone may determine the subjects of examination. Thus it was 
 both simple and convenient to carry on this seminary under the 
 immediate supervision of the bishop. At a centre of city life 
 the course was naturally a high one ; English was the medium 
 of instruction, and theological subjects were treated almost as 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 423 
 
 thoroughly as at theological colleges in the homeland. The 
 want of European missionaries from which the Society at that 
 time suffered also contributed to force on rapidly the task of 
 ordaining native agents. Down to the year 1S72, eighty-three 
 natives had been ordained in the Indian field of the Church 
 Missionary Society, the majority of these belonging to South 
 India. There were at that time only 225 ordained native 
 agents in the whole country. However, the centralisation 
 of the work of training at Madras did not meet with 
 success. It was not desirable that those clergy who were 
 destined at a later period to dwell amidst the rudimentary 
 surroundings of the solitudes of Tinnevelly should become 
 accustomed, during a residence of several years, to the 
 exaggerated conditions of English city life, and a ponderous 
 equipment in English theology was found to be of little 
 service to workers in the modest Shanan villages. The 
 Theological Seminary in Madras was therefore closed, the 
 Institution at Palamcottah was again opened as a seminary for 
 catechists, and a similar foundation, the Cambridge Nicholson 
 Institution, was erected at Cottayam for Travancore in the year 
 i860. It was at this time that the methed of training which 
 seems to us most fitting for the simple requirements of the 
 Shanan Mission was adopted. By this scheme the cleverest 
 children in the village schools were passed on to the boarding 
 schools at the various stations ; those who distinguished them- 
 selves there were promoted either to the catechists' seminary 
 or to that for school teachers, where after a given course of 
 study they were sent out and located at various places in the 
 district as assistants. If they stood the test of this practical 
 service for a number of years, they were once more sent to 
 college, this time to a final theological course, and when they 
 hfed finished this, they were ordained. The entire course of 
 training is in this instance given in Tamil. The Church 
 Missionary Society has again recently been making efforts to 
 raise its system of theological training to a higher level, partly 
 because the churches in Madras, Masulipatam, and other large 
 towns need a more highly trained pastorate, and partly because 
 of the exalted ideas of ministerial status consequent upon the 
 increasing ritualistic tendencies of the day. In addition, there- 
 fore, to the seminaries where instruction is given in the ver- 
 nacular — at Cottayam in Malayalam, at Palamcottah in Tamil, 
 and at Masulipatam in Telugu — the Society has deemed it 
 necessary to open yet another Divinity School in Madras (1884), 
 where advanced courses in English only are given to the most 
 proficient amongst the native helpers. 
 
 In North India the Church Missionary Society contented 
 
424 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 itself until about 1870 with giving its catechists private training 
 at the hands of specially qualified missionaries. In 1868 Rev. J. 
 Welland inaugurated a " Bengali Preparation Class " at Calcutta. 
 It was not till ten years later, however, that Rev. W. Blackett, 
 a thoroughly trained theologian, was sent out to found a 
 " Divinity School " specially intended for candidates for ordina- 
 tion ; this he did first at Krishnagar, and afterwards, in 1880, at 
 Calcutta. In the Punjab Rev. T. V. French, one of the most 
 brilliant Indian missionaries of the Church Missionary Society, 
 founded a " Divinity School " of a very high status, and with 
 obligatory instruction in Hebrew, at Lahore in 1869. As well as 
 this Urdu Seminary, another " Divinity School " was opened at 
 Allahabad in 1882 (by the gifted Dr. Hooper) for the United 
 Provinces and for the Hindu section of the population, whilst at 
 the same time a similar training college was erected at Poona 
 tor the whole of the work in the Bombay Presidency. Almost 
 all these institutions have passed through similar vicissitudes to 
 those in the Presidency of Madras. 
 
 The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society in Ceylon (and 
 here we refer to their Singhalese work ; in the Tamil district 
 around Jaffna the course of instruction varies in many particu- 
 lars) accepts as candidates for ordination only those who have 
 served for a number of years as evangelists, though these 
 candidates may either have been engaged in business or have 
 come directly from one of the educational colleges. A tolerably 
 good English education and genuine piety, proved by a blameless 
 life, are demanded of all seeking admission. A course lasting 
 one year only in the Theological Institution at Richmond Hill 
 (Galle) is prescribed, but the majority of the candidates remain 
 there three years before being able to pass the leaving examina- 
 tion of the college. After this, they do not as a general rule 
 enter the ministry at once, but are employed as catechists for a 
 period varying from one to four years, and during this time they 
 must pass a yearly Catechists' Examination. They then serve 
 for at least four years as " ministers on probation," during which 
 period they must in their leisure hours work through a prescribed 
 theological course with certain prescribed books, and test their 
 knowledge by an annual examination ; should they fail, that 
 particular year is not counted either in their ministerial record 
 or in their salary scale. Only when they have passed these four 
 annual examiinations — that is, after four years at the very least — 
 are they received as ministers in full connection.^ As such they 
 receive a higher salary, and are entitled to a seat and a vote in 
 the Synods. 
 
 ' The Wcskyan Alethodist Church. India and Ceylon. Madras, 1S99, pp. 107 
 et setj. 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 425 
 
 The Congregationalists connected with the Madura Mission 
 (the American Board) send out catechists who have received 
 some measure of elementary training to such villages as already 
 contain a few Christians or applicants for baptism, and often 
 enough these catechists are yoCing men who have merely gone 
 through the elementary or intermediate schools. If they meet 
 with good success, and should their flocks desire to retain their 
 services as permanent pastors, they proceed, for a shorter or 
 longer period as the case may be, to the theological training 
 college at Pasumalai, They are then tested by the missionaries 
 as to their spiritual equipment, and if they pass through the 
 ordeal successfully they are ordained for the spiritual service 
 of the native Church which proposed them in the first instance. 
 
 The requirements and aims of the various societies differ so 
 widely upon the subject of the training of native agents that 
 repeated and thorough discussion at all the great missionary 
 conferences has merely served to demonstrate the variety of 
 methods employed and bring forward the arguments for and 
 against each separate method. It is therefore unfortunately 
 impossible to write a connected history of this important branch 
 of missionary labour. A few general principles only have met 
 with universal acceptance. For instance, nearly everywhere the 
 distinction is made between a lower order of catechists and 
 an ordained ministry; admission to this latter is invariably 
 dependent upon service that has stood the test of years, and 
 in most cases upon the completion of a course of higher 
 theological instruction. Since fixed standards of education 
 have been introduced, thanks to the Indian educational system, 
 the view is very generally prevalent that all candidates for the 
 position of catechist shall at least have passed through the lower 
 secondary classes. Only in missions to the aborigines or with 
 catechists whose work would be confined to wholly ignorant 
 outcastes is there any inclination to accept such as possess 
 nothing but an elementary education. For ordination the 
 opinion is widely shared that the Indian matriculation examina- 
 tion should be taken as the standard of general education, and 
 many societies have actually fixed it as such, or at any rate 
 have pointed it out to their candidates as a desirable qualifica- 
 tion. But no hard and fast rule can be made in the matter, as 
 the consequence would be that applicants for ordination would 
 be forced to remain continuously at school until they had passed 
 this examination, and this would mean that the very desirable 
 probationary period in the inferior position of a catechist would 
 be lost or would have to be made up afterwards by a long period 
 of service as curate or probationer. As long as various independ- 
 ent missionary organisations (particularly the Baptists) ordain 
 
426 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 persons whose education is wholly defective, this will be looked 
 upon as an abuse tending to degrade the ministerial office in 
 the eyes of both Christians and heathen. On the other hand, it 
 cannot be denied that particularly the English-trained town 
 clergy, belonging as they frequently do to the third generation 
 of Christian families, have been anglicised to a deplorable extent, 
 and thereby estranged from their own people. The strict 
 regulations of the Government educational system have brought 
 about in almost every part of the country an entire separation 
 between the schoolmasters of the country and the catechists 
 and clergy ; in spite of the appointment by the State of a 
 paid body of teachers equipped with splendid certificates and 
 testimonials, the clergy everywhere endeavour to maintain a 
 certain superiority over them. 
 
 The conviction is generally held that a thorough course of 
 training at some theological college is indispensable for every 
 catechist. It is remarkable how slowly this idea has won for 
 itself acceptance in missionary circles. The Wesleyan Methodist 
 Missionary Society has been working among the Tamils of 
 Madras since the year 1817, in the Cauvery Delta since 1820, 
 and at Bangalore amongst the Tamil immigrants of the Mysore 
 since 1826; but not until the year 1899 did it open a training 
 college at Guindy, near Madras, for the catechists and teachers 
 engaged in its entire Tamil missions. It is characteristic, 
 however, that when once a beginning had been made, the 
 Kanarese Mission^ of the Wesleyans and their young Telugu 
 missions^ at Medak were equipped at once (1899) with training 
 colleges for catechists. The American Presbyterians in the 
 United Provinces and the Punjab have also deferred for a 
 remarkably long time the opening of a seminary. Although 
 they have been working in both these provinces since 1835 and 
 1836 respectively, and although many distinguished missionaries 
 have been found in their ranks, they did not, save for a few 
 shortlived attempts, proceed to the erection of a training college 
 for native helpers until 1885, when one was built at Saharanpur. 
 German missionary societies have made a science of the 
 training of their native agents. The Basle Missionary Society, 
 and even more the Leipzig Missionary Society enjoy in South 
 India the reputation, which is in our eyes thoroughly well 
 deserved, of possessing a particularly well-trained staff of 
 assistants. 
 
 Altogether, the missionary statistics for 1900 give a total of 
 893 ordained Indian pastors as against 5755 assistants and 
 
 ^ In conjunction with Haidwickc College in Mysore City, which was built 
 in 1901. 
 
 ^ Founded in 1S79. 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 427 
 
 catechists ; of these pastors, 402 are found in the Presidency 
 of Madras, 159 in Bengal, 188 in the United Provinces, and 
 the remaining 144 are spread over the Punjab, Central India, 
 the Central Provinces, Bombay, Gujarat, etc. These 900 odd 
 Hindu clergy are the glory and the crown of Indian missions ; 
 amongst them are to be found a long list of men of the highest 
 intellectual and spiritual gifts, who would have adorned any 
 public office, and who would likewise have attained no slight 
 distinction in the academic world. We shall content ourselves 
 with naming W. T. Satthianadhan and Rajagopal in Madras, 
 Krishna Mohan Banerjea, Lai Behari Day and Mathura Nath 
 Bose in Bengal, Abdul Masih, Imad-ud-Din,K. C. Chatterjea, Jani 
 Ali and Nehemiah Goreh in North India, Narayan Sheshadri, 
 Hormazji Pestonji, Dhanjibhai Naoroji and V. B. Karmarkar 
 in the Bombay Presidency. It says something for the import- 
 ance of these native preachers when Professor S. Satthianadhan 
 of Madras, in his attempt to collect biographies of the most 
 distinguished Indian Christians, chooses in a total number of 
 forty-two men and women, twenty-nine belonging to the native 
 pastorate.^ In our detailed History of Indian Missions we shall 
 encounter these pillars of the Indian Church in every part of 
 the mission field. 
 
 To get a glimpse of the degree of education possessed by 
 the native staff of the various societies, we shall analyse that 
 section of it belonging to South India. This section is com- 
 posed of 10,551 missionary agents ; of these lOO are graduates 
 of universities, 250 have passed their first University examina- 
 tion (the First in Arts), 650 have passed the leaving examination, 
 2650 have passed through the lower secondary schools, and 
 6500 through the elementary schools ; 406 of them are 
 ordained pastors, 2775 assistants and catechists, 71 colporteurs, 
 786 Bible-women, and 6315 teachers in schools. 
 
 4. The Building ur of the Christian Church 
 OF India 
 
 During the first half of the nineteenth century the native 
 churches in connection with all the various missionary agencies 
 were equally dependent on the missionaries and their respective 
 societies. Missionaries were the preachers and pastors, the 
 parents and counsellors of the Christians ; even where they 
 employed native assistants in the oversight of the churches, 
 they were only the curates, so to speak, of the missionaries, who 
 did that part of the work for which these latter had neither the 
 
 '^ Sketches of Indian Christians. Madras, 1896. 
 
42 8 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 time nor the strength. That it was by no means an ideal 
 arrangement to have Europeans as pastors over Indian 
 congregations had as yet occurred to hardly a single missionary 
 society, and such a state of things fitted in perfectly with the 
 Mabap ^ system, which at that time was still universally 
 prevalent. 
 
 When that well-known Secretary of the American Board, 
 Dr. Rufus Anderson, and his friend Dr. Augustus Thompson, 
 were on their important deputation tour to the Board's stations 
 in India and Ceylon in 1854-1855, they were authorised to take 
 in hand the reorganisation of the native churches. The views 
 then held by the ablest experts on the mission field were 
 well expressed by a missionary of the American Board 
 (Harding) at the Allahabad Conference in 1872. "As to 
 the condition of church membership, we suppose a spiritual 
 union with Christ is the only and indispensable pre-requisite. 
 There can be no Christian fellowship without fellowship with 
 Christ, and unconverted men can add no strength to a church. 
 If received, they must ever be a source of weakness to it. The 
 rights and responsibilities of a church should be respected from 
 the outset ; they should be recognised as coming, not from the 
 mission, but from Christ. These righfs and responsibilities 
 have respect to all the concerns of the church. The choice of 
 the pastor and other officers — the support of the pastor and the 
 decision with him of the amount of his salary — the discipline of 
 the church — the erection and care of the place of worship — and 
 efforts for the extension of Christ's kingdom. In most of these 
 matters the missionary will aid the infant church by counsel 
 and advice, and for a season, as agent of a foreign society, he 
 will help to support the pastor, if need be ; but only as supple- 
 menting what the church gives. It is very likely that churches 
 thus thrown upon their own responsibilities will sometimes 
 make mistakes, as they did in the first century. But if they 
 have true allegiance to Christ, we ought to trust them. The 
 apostles, after ordaining one or more elders in every church — 
 taking, we suppose, the most suitable men available — did not 
 hesitate to leave the churches to work out their own destiny 
 under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Is it not safe to follow 
 their example.? Nor do we think it at all expedient for the 
 missionaries to be combined with the converts of this country in 
 their ecclesiastical organisations. Our work as evangelists and 
 agents of foreign societies must be temporary in its nature, 
 and by acting only in our own distinctive character as mission- 
 aries, we are able to render all necessary assistance, while we 
 avoid many grave difficulties, and at the same time furnish the 
 iCf. p. 4". 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 
 
 429 
 
 best opportunity for free and spontaneous action in the native 
 church."! 
 
 But the Board was far-seeing enough to perceive that these 
 views of the Churches at home could only be carried out on 
 the mission field subject to certain modifications, and it was 
 catholic enough to leave the form which these particular 
 modifications of congregational principles should take in the 
 hands of the missionaries on the field. In this manner a new 
 and important element in Indian missions was evolved, namely, 
 the conception of an Indian Church independent of assistance 
 from the great foreign Society or Board. Anderson's views 
 are happily expressed in three words : the native churches 
 should be "self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propaga- 
 ting." These Congregationalist principles, which Anderson 
 advocated with such skill, enthusiasm, and erudition, are in 
 their essentials those accepted by the American Board, the 
 London Missionary Society, and almost all the Baptist Missions 
 in India — at any rate in theory, for in practice the missionaries 
 have received a position of greater influence and more extensive 
 power than the foregoing principles would have led one to 
 expect. The tracing out of these modifications in detail, we 
 must reserve for our detailed history of the several missions, 
 
 Anderson's ideas were also and quite independently 
 agitating the mind of his great contemporary, Henry Venn, 
 the greatest Missionary Secretary of the Church Missionary 
 Society, and that at a time when the diminution of receipts 
 and the lack of offers for missionary service were bringing 
 before his Society the grave question of retrenchment on a 
 large scale. Venn's ideas were briefly as follows : the ambition 
 of every evangelical mission is its " Euthanasia," its develop- 
 ment into an independent self-governing native church which 
 has grown up under the fostering care of a missionary society 
 from abroad and become competent to manage its own affairs. 
 With this object in view, a clear distinction must be maintained 
 between the evangelisation of the heathen and the pastoral 
 oversight of the Christians, Strictly speaking, the first only 
 is the duty of the missionary society. Every society ought 
 therefore to limit itself as quickly and as consistently as 
 possible to this its divine task. This being the case, Venn 
 thought that the missionary society and its agents ought to 
 confine themselves to those branches of activity which directly 
 serve the proclamation of the gospel amongst the heathen, 
 such as vernacular preaching, zenana work, medical missions, 
 and so forth ; they should, furthermore, retain the direction 
 of the great institutions, the orphanages, the colleges, and the 
 
 1 Report of General Miss. Conf. at Allahabad, pp. 288-290. 
 
430 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 boarding schools, and the training colleges for preachers and 
 teachers. All this unwieldy machinery ought not, in his 
 opinion, to be laid on the weak shoulders of the Indian churches 
 for a considerable time to come. On the other hand, the 
 Christian congregations once gathered together ought to make 
 themselves entirely responsible for their own pastors. The 
 two most important obligations in this connection are (i) 
 that the native church should learn to collect the funds for 
 its own ecclesiastical needs, — the salary of its pastor and its 
 teachers, the cost and maintenance of its church school, 
 minister's house, schoolhouse, etc., — and (2) the administration 
 of these funds by trustworthy persons. In order to promote 
 these two objects, Venn proposed the appointment in every 
 pastorate of a "Church Committee," which was to be in the 
 main a body for the collection of funds, though besides this 
 it was to exercise all the duties of elders in the church. A 
 larger or smaller number of pastorates and church committees 
 were to be united in one large " Church Council," whose 
 duties were the spending of all monies received, the payment 
 of the salaries of church and school officials, the appointment 
 of the same, the arrangements connected with all new buildings 
 and repairs upon church property; in short, the direction of 
 the entire ecclesiastical province presented by it. As supreme 
 authority Venn wished to create a " Central Council," a kind 
 of General Synod for the ecclesiastical administration of an 
 immense area, whose powers were to be rather advisory than 
 executive. The basis of the scheme was the " Church Councils," 
 and on this account Venn's whole project has been termed the 
 " Church Council System." Venn went to work slowly with 
 the carrying out of these plans. He thought it was rash, and 
 in fact impossible, to bring about so radical a change in church 
 administration all at once ; the native churches had not been 
 trained to collect funds in this way, nor were they yet in a 
 condition to spend such large sums faithfully and well. So 
 long as the Missionary Boards rendered them financial assist- 
 ance they must retain the right to nominate the chairmen 
 of the Church Councils, and through them to control the 
 executive and spending powers of those bodies. The obvious 
 background of the scheme was of course the Anglican episcopal 
 system, in which the spiritual direction of the church, the 
 oversight and ordination of the clergy, church discipline, etc., 
 were purely episcopal functions. Only with this background 
 are Venn's gifted ideas feasible. 
 
 Venn imparted these plans to his Committee and to the 
 missionaries of his Society in three great memoranda (those 
 of 1 85 1, 18C1, and 1866), and then commenced rapidly to 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 431 
 
 introduce this Church Council system throughout the whole 
 of the Indian mission stations of his Society — though we 
 should note that it was confined almost solely to the Indian 
 work of the Society. A new era for C.M.S. missions in India 
 was thereby opened. This development has since become of 
 such decisive importance that we must mention at any rate 
 its leading features. Its first consequence was that on the 
 older mission fields, particularly in Tinnevelly and Krishnagar, 
 where there were consolidated Christian communities, the 
 number of missionaries was perceptibly reduced. The system 
 was introduced at Tinnevelly in the year 1869, and the 
 country divided up into ten Church Councils. Instead, 
 however, of placing a missionary in authority at the head of 
 each of these, the older missionaries were allowed gradually to 
 drift out of the work, whether owing to death or return to the 
 home country, so that, ten years later, only one such missionary, 
 Rev. Edward Sargent, was still in the district, and he mean- 
 while had been created a bishop. The entire ecclesiastical 
 oversight of the Tinnevelly Mission was thus laid on one 
 pair of shoulders. 
 
 This resulted in the ten District Councils being transformed 
 into one great Church Council, having under it fifteen " Circle 
 Committees" presided over by native clergymen. Ever since 
 this great change the growth of the mission, up to that time 
 the most successful in India belonging to the Church Missionary 
 Society, has been practically at a standstill. This is probably 
 not entirely due to the rapid withdrawal of the European 
 missionaries, although that undoubtedly had a good deal to 
 do with it. The fault lies not so much in Venn's plans as in 
 the manner in which he applied them to Indian missions ; 
 he could easily have taken sufficient precautions by making the 
 Church Council districts smaller, and by placing at the head of 
 each of them a competent and experienced missionary. 
 
 Yet we cannot deny that there were dangers in Venn's 
 scheme which were evolved slowly but surely, and which have 
 since necessitated its revision. We shall only enumerate three 
 of them. The sharp line drawn between pure evangelisation 
 and pastoral work is quite untenable whilst the Christian com- 
 munity remains a tiny minority in the midst of an all-prevailing 
 and all-surrounding heathenism. Under such circumstances 
 it is far from healthy to concentrate the thoughts of the whole 
 native church exclusively upon its own ecclesiastical interests. 
 To do so cripples both their missionary spirit and their 
 missionary power. Then, too, the separation of the missionaries 
 from the native Christians is likewise unhealthy ; according to 
 Venn's ideas, the former (save that they occupied the chairman- 
 
432 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ship of the Church Council) were to have no official connection 
 with the native churches, not even with the Christians who had 
 been converted through their instrumentality, as soon as these 
 latter had been baptized. The barrier erected by distinctions 
 of race — which was already perceptible enough — was thereby 
 considerably strengthened, and a separation of interests brought 
 about in the very point where the most inward unity and 
 harmony should have prevailed. In this connection we find 
 our third criticism, that by this system the difference between 
 the work and aims of the missionary society and those of the 
 church it has brought into being is unnecessarily accentuated ; 
 hence the unwholesome view that the parent society has nothing 
 to do with the native church nor the church with the society. 
 Criticise, however, as we may, it must be admitted that Venn's 
 ideas constitute the most brilliant original attempt to solve the 
 problem of the building up of a native Christian church on a 
 national basis, and also that the great groups of adherents of 
 the Church Missionary Society in South India have made, com- 
 paratively speaking, far and away the greatest advance towards 
 becoming self-supporting churches.^ Other missionary societies 
 have reproduced in their Indian work, with greater or smaller 
 modifications, the ecclesiastical systems of the homeland. In 
 some cases this has been accomplished by regarding the native 
 communities as an ecclesiastical province of the parent church 
 at home : this is the method adopted by the American Presby- 
 terians, the Established Church of Scotland, and the Hermanns- 
 burg Missionary Society ; or independent bodies or synods have 
 been constituted in which the supreme powers are in the hands 
 of the missionary society or missionary board : such are most 
 of the German and German-American missions. The most 
 complicated method of administration is that adopted by 
 the Methodists, especially as exercised with great care by 
 the American Episcopal Methodists in North India. The 
 mission field is divided into circuits, at the head of each of 
 which a preacher in charge is placed ; a number of circuits 
 compose a " district," with a presiding elder at its head. Yet 
 again a number of districts form a church province presided 
 over by a bishop, but matters are so arranged as to allow several 
 
 1 A successful attempt to readapt Venn's Church Council system has recently 
 been made in the Punjab Mission of the Church Missionary Society. By it all 
 Christians united in membership with the Church Missionary Society, missionaries 
 as well as natives, are united in one great body, at the head of which stands a 
 Central Council ; this Council is composed of deputies from the Missionary Committee 
 at home, of members of the local corresponding committees, and of chosen represent- 
 atives of the churches in the provinces. Beneath it are the District Councils, and 
 for this purpose the Punjab Mission is divided into six districts. In every community 
 there is a " Pastorate Committee" for conducting business of a purely local character 
 {^Proceedings, 1905, p. 228). 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 433 
 
 church provinces to be united under one bishop. In this intri- 
 cate system, which is even more finely articulated than Venn's 
 in its lower branches, European missionaries as such have no 
 place, they may be preachers, or presiding elders, or bishops, 
 but it may easily happen that as such they may be subordinate 
 to natives. Such a system is calculated to attract native 
 Christians to take a larger share in the work of the church. 
 
 Attempts to develop the native churches brought into being 
 by missions form one of the characteristic features of Indian 
 missionary effort, particularly since the year 1870 or there- 
 abouts. It is a matter of the greatest interest to note what 
 methods have been adopted in this direction by the various 
 societies, and what degree of success they have met with up to 
 the present time. But this is so individual an affair, and even 
 when figures tabulating its results are available it becomes a 
 matter to be only considered and pronounced judgment upon in 
 connection with the internal working of each separate mission ; 
 we shall therefore be acting more wisely in postponing it to our 
 detailed history of missions. 
 
 This we can say, that so far an independent Indian Church 
 does not exist, nor can it do so until the great majority of the 
 population in all the larger provinces of the country has come 
 over to the side of Christianity, thereby rendering the principal 
 part of the work of the missionary societies unnecessary. Even 
 then the Missionary Board can only relinquish the work so far 
 as to give to the Indian Church such freedom of action as may 
 best enable it to make regulations calculated to secure its own 
 development. 
 
 Efforts to establish one great uniform Protestant church in 
 India have been not lacking ; some of these plans have even gone 
 so far as to ignore the missionary societies, others to totally dis- 
 regard the points of difference both in doctrine and otherwise 
 which exist between them. The educated Christians of the 
 upper classes are the advocates of such schemes, and their in- 
 spired and eloquent protagonist was Kali Charan Banerjea, a 
 distinguished, honoured, and truly earnest Christian, once chief 
 executive officer of the University of Calcutta. He founded 
 an association in Calcutta in 1870 which was to be the basis of 
 a National Christian Church of Bengal. He desired to build 
 up an organisation more in harmony with Oriental ideas and 
 tastes : a bishop elected for life was to be placed at the head of 
 it, but was to possess no greater authority than the Moderator 
 of a Presbyterian Synod. The individual churches were to 
 manage their own affairs. Great importance was attached to 
 baptism by immersion. It was thus an attempt to unite in 
 eclectic fashion the leading ideas of all the great missionary 
 28 
 
434 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 societies. The name of the association was altered from time 
 to time ; now it was known as the Bengal Christian Association, 
 now as the " Christo Samaj." A " Western India Native 
 Christian Alliance" having the same objects in view was 
 founded in Bombay in 1871. How intensely the question 
 occupied the minds of Indian Christians was shown in 
 December 1879, when the Synods of the Church Missionary 
 Society and of the American Presbyterians met in Amritsar 
 and Lahore respectively. At these Synods the native clergy 
 frankly expressed the opinion that the difficulties which stand 
 in the way of the establishment of a national church for 
 India were caused solely by the missionaries. The native 
 brethren of every denomination regarded themselves as one 
 united body, since with regard to the central teaching of 
 Christianity no difference of opinion was to be found 
 amongst them. " Substantive Christianity and not adjective 
 Christianity should alone be cultivated amongst us." " But be- 
 cause the European missionaries, from whom they had received 
 the gospel and in dependence upon whom they now found 
 themselves, were not united, the native Christians must perforce 
 also remain apart." " We native Christians of the Punjab are 
 neither Presbyterians nor Episcopalians, and we have hitherto, 
 thank God, lived together in such loving union that we have 
 scarcely perceived our connection with the various denomina- 
 tions." The question received special and enthusiastic attention 
 at the General Missionary Conferences held at Allahabad in 
 1872 and Bombay in 1892, but without getting any farther than 
 catching the echoes, so to speak, of music that was still a long 
 way ahead. Since that time the movement has lost much of 
 its importance. Quite recently a " National Church " has been 
 established in Madras, but it has won no general recognition. 
 Far more important in South India is the " Madras Native 
 Christian Association" (founded in 1887), an inter-denomina- 
 tional body which aims at a practical support of all poor 
 Christians, and a friendly interchange of ideas between the 
 various sections of Indian Christendom. 
 
 In view of these attempts, it is remarkable that the various 
 great groups of missionary societies, the Baptists, the Methodists, 
 the Lutherans, etc., have hitherto made so few attempts to 
 unite within their own immediate circles. This is all the more 
 striking when we compare the successful efforts after ecclesi- 
 astical unity that have been made by the Christians of Japan. 
 For Anglican Missions a form of organisation is already to 
 hand in the Anglican State Church of India with its episcopacy; 
 yet, in spite of good episcopal doctrine, it is evident how far 
 from making for uniformity was this unwieldy system, which 
 
THE SUCCESS OF MISSIONS 435 
 
 after all had been created in the first instance for Europeans, 
 in that for a long time there existed an earnest desire in C.M.S. 
 circles to found a missionary episcopate for the native churches 
 of India separate from, and in addition to, the State episcopate, 
 and the European churches governed by it. This desire was 
 expressed in an official memorial in the year 1877, ^nd it is only 
 quite recently that the impracticability of the project has been 
 recognised. In March 1901 ^ the Church Missionary Society 
 published an important memorandum in which it set forth, as 
 the object of its missionary policy, a united Anglican Church 
 for Englishmen and Indians as far as possible in the future 
 under Indian bishops. Whether a closer union of the Anglican 
 Church of India on the lines of this memorandum is being 
 planned for the immediate future we are unable to say. In any 
 case a national organisation corresponding to the Japanese 
 Seikokwei is not contemplated. 
 
 The Presbyterians alone have made appreciable progress in 
 these attempts at closer union. Since the year 1822 they have 
 with patient perseverance and varying success followed the plan 
 of unifying all Presbyterian missions and native churches 
 gathered around them. For twenty years past a Presbyterian 
 Alliance has assembled from time to time with the sole object 
 of furthering this scheme. The decision come to in 1882 to 
 found a great central theological seminary at Allahabad as a 
 bond of union for all the thirteen Presbyterian societies was 
 not carried out. In January, 1901, a congress of delegates 
 was held in Allahabad which materially aided the work of 
 unification. In October of the same year the missionaries of 
 the United Free Church and of the American Reformed Arcot 
 Mission banded themselves together at Vellore under the de- 
 signation of the United South Indian Church. Terminal 
 negotiations were then carried through in North India : on 
 December 19th, 1904, the Presbyterian Church of India 
 came into existence, and held its first General Synod at 
 Allahabad. Thus there is now intimate communion between 
 the native Christians gathered in by eight Presbyterian 
 missionary societies.- What position in or with regard to 
 this ecclesiastical fellowship the missionaries ought to take 
 up has not yet been determined, and is for the present left 
 optional to each missionary society. 
 
 The missions belonging to Lutheran denominations, parti- 
 
 ^ Cf. Intelligencer, 1901, pp. 241-270. 
 
 " "The United Free Church of Scotland, the Established Church of Scotland, 
 the English, Irish, Canadian, American Presbyterians, and the American Reformed 
 Church, and the Welsh Calvinists. The American ' United Presbyterians,' the Scotch 
 ' Original Secession,' and a few smaller Presbyterian missions have not yet signified 
 their adhesion to it. " 
 
436 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 cularly those in South India, are preparing the way for closer 
 relationships. In the summer of 1905, an "All India Lutheran 
 Conference " sat for the first time at Kodaikanal, a health resort 
 on the Palni Mountains, which has proved, at any rate in several 
 directions, a means of rapprodieinent — such as, for instance, in 
 founding a Lutheran Literature Society and the publication of 
 a common Lutheran organ, the Gospel Witness} 
 
 The Congregational Missions in South India (the London 
 Missionary Society and the American Board) also signified 
 their assent, at Madura in 1905, to a uniform, if somewhat 
 loose, church federation, which was to include all the native 
 churches of both Societies in the Tamil country, Travancore, 
 and North Ceylon. 
 
 In the year 1905, a plan originated by the native Christians 
 of South India and warmly supported by the missionaries of 
 the various Societies was conceived : a vast and purely Indian 
 Missionary Society was to be formed for the evangelisation of 
 these masses of the people not yet touched by the different 
 missionary organisations. The National Missionary Society is 
 the outcome of these proposals ; it has begun work in the 
 Punjab. As by far the greater number of native Christians 
 have hitherto shown a deplorable lack of interest in active 
 missionary work, every step in this direction ought to be re- 
 corded with satisfaction, even though for the present we may 
 have our doubts concerning the feasibility of their far-reaching 
 proposal.^ 
 
 ^ Edited by Dr. Wolf of Guntur. - Cf. Intelligencer, 1905, p. 920. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 A. (Introduction, p. 12) 
 
 There are two sciences which have largely contributed to clear up the 
 question of the origin and mutual relationship of the peoples of India : 
 during the greater part of the nineteenth century, comparative philology, 
 and, in quite recent years, anthropology. The last-named claims to 
 have found a sure test of the relationship between the various races in 
 the comparative measuring of those parts of the body which largely 
 remain unchanged (anthropometry). In this science three proportions 
 are mainly called in question — the proportion borne by the length of 
 the head to its breadth, the proportion borne by the length of the nose 
 to its breadth, and the angle formed by a line between two correspond- 
 ing points on the upper eyelids and the root of the nose. For brevity's 
 sake the length of the head, that of the nose, and the line joining the 
 eyes are considered as 100, and the two widths and the angle formed 
 by the eyes as proportions of this number ; for instance, in one head 
 the length is to the breadth as 100 : 87. This proportion is then 
 termed the "index" of the head, i.e., in the case just considered the 
 index is 87. According to the index of length of head, therefore, men 
 are divided into "long-headed" (index under 75), "medium-headed" 
 (index 75-80), and "broad-headed" (index over 80) ; or, scientifically 
 speaking, into dolicho-cephales, meso-cephales, and brachy-cephales. 
 Similarly, according to the proportion of the length to the breadth of 
 their noses, men are divided into "narrow-nosed" (index under 70), 
 "medium-nosed" (index 70-85), and "broad-nosed" (index over 85); 
 the scientific expressions are leptorrhines, mesorrhines, and platyrrhines. 
 The angle between the eyes and the nasal bone is only of importance 
 amongst Mongolian races, who have what is called " oblique " vision. 
 This remarkable phenomenon of " slit " eyes is in no way due to the 
 eyes of Mongols being differently placed to our own — as a matter of 
 fact they are not ; the reason is that in all such peoples the root of the 
 nose is remarkably depressed, with the consequence that in the angle 
 named above (which is always an obtuse angle) the two sides are 
 together larger than the base line. For instance, if we take 100 as the 
 length of this base line, the entire length of the two sides (which is the 
 index of the angle) is over 100, and we are able to distinguish between 
 "flat-eyed" (index under no), "medium-eyed" (index 110-113), and 
 " projecting-eyed " (index above 113); or to give them their correct 
 
 437 
 
438 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 names, platyopic, mesopic, and proopic faces. In the text we have con- 
 tented ourselves with the German terms, and have only given the index 
 number enclosed in brackets in extraordinary cases. Formerly it was 
 the custom to attach chief importance to bodily size, and to differentiate 
 between big men (over 5-57 ft.), over average (5'4i ft.-5"57 ft.)} under 
 average (5 "2 5 ft.-5"4i ft.), and small men (under 5-25 ft,); emphasis 
 was also laid on the colour of the skin, on the hair and beard, 
 on the length of the fore-arm, and so on. But it has latterly been 
 proved that most of these indications are dependent on chance causes, 
 such as food, climate, state of health, clothing, etc., and that even in the 
 case of closely related tribes or castes they are by no means constant. 
 
 B. (Chap. I. p. 28) 
 
 Eusebius, Hist. EccL, v. 10 : wv els yevo^evos koI 6 IlavTaivos Kat cis 
 'IvSous IXOeZv Aeyerat, tvOa Adyos evpclv airov Tpo^Odaav ttjv airoi/ 
 rrapovcTiav to Kara MaT^at'ov cvayyeAtov irapa tlo-lv avToOi tov Xpicnbv 
 iireyvwKoaLV, oTs (iap6oXop.alov twv dTroo-ToAwj/ eVa Krjpviai, a^rot? re 
 'Ej3paLU)v ypa.fjLp.aa-L ttjv tov MarOaiov KaraAei't/'at ypa^i'jv. 
 
 C. (Chap. I. p. 29) 
 
 Epist. Ixx. ad magnum oratorem : " Pantaenus ob prsecipuK erudi- 
 tionis gloriam a Demetrio missus est in Indiam, ut Christum apud 
 Brachmanas et illius gentis philosophos praedicaret." We only wonder 
 what use Indian Christians could possibly make of a Gospel of Matthew 
 in Hebrew ! 
 
 D. (Chap. I. p. 30) 
 
 Fkilosforg., iii. 5 : KaKcW^v eh rrjv uXX-qv a^LKero 'IvSiktjj/ kol iroXXa 
 Twv Trap uorots ovk ciayos hpu>p.€vuiv eTTavwpOomaTO. Kat yap Kade^ofievoL 
 Ttjjv cvayyeAiKwv avayvwcrp.aTwv Ittoiovvto t7jv d/<pdacrtv Ka\ aXXa tlvo. u)v 
 /XT] 6eio<; 9e<Tp.o^ eTrecrTctTei htiTrpaTTov ro dAAa TavO" eKaara irpo'S to 
 crel3d(Tp.i.ov a^Tois 8e ^eo(^tAes fxeTapvOfXLo-as, to t^s CKKAr^o-ias Sdy/ta 
 CKparvveTO ov yap iSlovTO (f)T](Tiv 6 SvaaefSr]<; ovtos, t^s to Oelov aij3a<; 
 ^iopOova-rj'i vcfirjyycruos i$ dpxrj<; uTrapaTpwTws to €Tepooi;o-tov Trpc(r(3ev6p.evoi. 
 The Philostorgius Fi'agmoiia were preserved by Photius, who saw in 
 Philostorgius a great heretic, and who always introduced citations from 
 him, therefore, with "Thus saith this heretic," and similar formulae. 
 
 E. (Chap. I. p. 31) 
 
 It is possible, however, that this entire tradition of Syrian immi- 
 gration from Mesopotamia is erroneous. Any absolutely reliable 
 information supplied by succeeding centuries points to Persia as the 
 fountainhead of Indian Christianity; and in Persia at that time the 
 Syrian Church (the monophysitic branch of it), its language, usages, and 
 ecclesiastical discipline were all-powerful ; the seat of" the Patriarchate, 
 
APPENDIX 439 
 
 however, was Antioch. Only after the destruction of the Christian 
 Church in Persia can the ecclesiastical headquarters of the Indian 
 Church have been translated to Mesopotamia. Furthermore, the 
 immigration of Thomas Kanna and his companions is stated, in other 
 native sources of information, to have been much later, about 820. 
 
 F. (Chap. I. p. 34) 
 
 We give the main paragraph of this highly interesting document — the 
 translation is Dr. Gundert's : " Hari Sri. Ganapati be adored. So 
 soon as the sacred sway of the Lord of Earth, the Master of Men, 
 Chakravarti Vira Kerala had passed in regular succession to Sri 
 Vira Raghava Chakravarti, whose sceptre now settles the destiny 
 of many hundreds of thousands of cities, ... the following gracious 
 appointment was made in the Royal Palace. We have presented the 
 lordship of Manigramam to Iravi Korttan of Mahodeverpattanam 
 (Kranganur), who is henceforward to be styled 'Great Merchant of the 
 Kerala World.' We have likewise accorded him the right to receive 
 vestments (?), house pillars (?), income, the curved sword, and with it 
 sovereign control over trade and commerce, the right to have heralds 
 and forerunners, the right to make use of the five instruments of music, 
 to conches and torches ; also the privilege of having garments strewn 
 before him ; we have granted him the use of the palanquin, the royal 
 umbrella, the drum from the north country ; the privilege of a gateway 
 with seats and ornamental arches, the sovereign lordship over the four 
 estates, likewise over the oil manufacturers and the five classes of 
 artisans. We have given as a perpetual possession of Iravi Korttan, 
 Lord of the City, rights of brokerage and the customary tribute of all 
 that is contained in the para, weighed with the scales, measured with 
 the tape, and of all that shall be sold or worn or stored, whether it be 
 sugar or salt, nutmeg or oil, or whatever else it may be, between the 
 estuary of Kodungalur (Kranganur) and the Tower, or within the four 
 Talis and the towns belonging thereto. We have granted it as an 
 unconditional fief to Iravi Korttan, the Great Merchant of the Kerala 
 World, and his sons and sons' sons in direct succession for ever." . . . 
 
 G. (Chap. I. p. 38) 
 
 Several references have already been made in the text to Dr. W. 
 Germann's Die Kirche der Thomaschristen : Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte 
 der orient alischeji Kirchen (C. Bertelsmann, Giitersloh, pp. 781). This 
 is a book of reference based on extensive studies of original sources ; 
 the only objection one can raise against it is that scientific details are 
 frequently too much in evidence, and the main argument is thereby 
 overladen. Even when we are unable to accept Germann's conclusions, 
 he yet manages to place the whole of the materials we have to go upon 
 in such detail and in so objective a fashion before us that we are well 
 able to form an independent opinion upon the matter in question. 
 
 In connection with the present section of this history, and concern- 
 
440 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ing early Romish Missions in India, reference should be made to a 
 series of articles by Kunstmann : " Die Missionen in Indien und China 
 im 14 und 15 Jahrhundert " {Historischpolitische Blatter, 1856, vol. i.), 
 and to Germann's article on " Indien und die abendlandische Kirche 
 im Mittelalter" {Allgeju. Miss. Zeitschrift, 1874, p. 350 et seq.). A 
 model record of Roman Catholic missionary history from 1498-1744 
 is that of Maxim. Miillbauer, Geschichte der katholischen Missioneti in 
 Ostindie?i von der Zeit Fasco da Gania's bis zur Mitte des 18 
 Jahrhunderts" (Freiburg, 1852, p. 372). This work, which was crowned 
 by the Roman Catholic Theological Faculty at Munich, is based on a 
 wide knowledge of original documents, and is written with remarkable 
 restraint. Certainly the author openly attempts, e.g., to excuse even a 
 man like Nobili to the uttermost limits of admissibility; nevertheless 
 he exercises at times a criticism that is very just. The traditions con- 
 cerning the labours of the Apostle Thomas are bluntly labelled as 
 "fairy tales composed by native Christians" (p. 12). Xavier's work is 
 dismissed in ten pages (61-71), certainly not without prejudice; and 
 he refers to the so-called "miracles" of that saint (p. 67) without any 
 attempt at criticism, and unfortunately would seem never himself to 
 have read Xavier's letters. The most valuable sections of the book, 
 which, particularly in its early chapters, is now considerably out of date, 
 commence at p. 71. 
 
 Our description of Xavier's labours is largely based on Rev. H. 
 Venn's biography, as rendered into German by Dr. Hoffmann, Franz 
 Xavier, ein weltgeschicJitliches Missionsbild (Wiesbaden, 1869, p. 418). 
 Neither the first section, "The Progress of Missions before Xavier's 
 Time," pp. 1-115, nor the third, "Christian Missions since Xavier," 
 pp. 261-418, are of permanent value; but the intermediate portion, 
 "Francisco Xavier's Life and Work," pp. 116-260, is remarkable for 
 its accuracy, conscientious research, and evangelical charity. To obtain 
 a real knowledge of the times, however, it is absolutely necessary to 
 read for oneself Xavier's " Letters." The edition we have used is that 
 published at Ratisbon in 1877, 2 vols. For the sake of accuracy we 
 may mention that the story of the crucifix at Baranula is there found 
 in vol. i., p. 315, and that of raising the dead in vol. i., p. 161. 
 Comparison should here be made with Xavier's letter of May 23rd, 
 1543 (vol. i., p. 104). Xavier was praying for a woman in travail; by 
 means of an interpreter he explained to her the most important articles 
 of faith (!!), and "by God's grace the woman believed all I declared to 
 her." In the meantime (!) the woman brought forth a child — and was 
 immediately baptized with her whole house. 
 
 For Xavier's ignorance of the vernacular see vol. i., p. 169, and 
 compare therewith the letter on p. 154 — which may consist merely of 
 extracts made by another hand. At that time, according to the name 
 given at the foot of the letter, Xavier was at Punical, i.e. in the very 
 midst of the Parava Christians, and the language alluded to can only 
 mean the Tamil spoken in that region. The brief animadversion upon 
 the translation of "I believe" in the Creed (vol. i. pp. 141-144) has, 
 however, very little to do with the matter, and only proves that his 
 
APPENDIX 441 
 
 colleague (at that time the only one), Mansilla, was an even worse 
 linguist than Xavier (cf. especially p. log). In the letter on p. 108 of 
 vol. i., Xavier expresses himself on the subject of his missionary methods 
 as on p. 49 of the present volume : this highly characteristic letter 
 ought to be printed in extenso, but the quotation from Venn contains 
 a summary of it. For the letter to Loyola mentioned on p. 52 of this 
 book, cf. Venn, p. 385 et seq., especially p. 385 : "On account of their 
 deplorable vices, the natives are little suited for Christianity. So greatly 
 do they hate it that the mere mention of it is enough to throw them 
 into a passion. They are as afraid of being exhorted to embrace 
 Christianity as they are of death." The letter of January 20th, 1548, 
 to King Joao iii. will be found in vol. i. pp. 330-338. For a critical 
 estimate of Francisco Xavier and Robert de Nobili, the brilliant 
 articles of Dr. Hermann Gundert in the Evang. Missionary Magazine, 
 1868, pp. 34 and 49, will be of interest. They are written by one well 
 acquainted with the Tamils and Tamil missions. Compare in the 
 same magazine the article on "Joseph Beschi," p. 97 et seq. 
 
 H. (Chap. I. p. 39) 
 
 " Intravi in Indiam et fui in contrada Indise ad ecclesiam sancti 
 Thomge Apostoli mensibus XIII. et ibi baptizavi circa centum personas 
 in diversis locis et socius fuit mese vitse frater Nicolaus de Pistorio de 
 ordine fratrum prsedicatorum." 
 
 I. (Chap. I. p. 41) 
 
 " Hi sunt qui nos accusant, nos percutiunt, nos in carcerem poni 
 faciunt et lapidant ; sicut de facto probavi et quater per eos (sc. 
 Sarracenos) incarceratus fui. Quotiens autem depilatus, verberatus, et 
 lapidatus, Deus ipse novit, et ego, qui sustinui (peccatis meis exi- 
 gentibus) eo quod nondum potui vitam pro fide sustinendo martyrium 
 finire sicut fecerunt quatuor socii mei. De ctetero, de me fiat voluntas 
 Dei. Quinque etiam Praedicatores et quatuor Minores fuerunt illuc, 
 meo tempore, pro fide catholica crudeliter trucidati. V^e mihi, quod 
 non fui una cum eis ibi." 
 
 The names, too, and frontiers and relative conditions of dependency 
 amongst these little states have been altered and cannot be ascertained. 
 The names we have quoted in the text are those which recur most 
 frequently in history, although, strangely enough, most of them are 
 omitted from the long official list of principalities. Cf. Germann, 
 p. 588. 
 
 J. (Chap. I. p. 44) 
 
 As early as 1453 King Alfonso v. of Portugal had conferred on the 
 Order of Christ the Jierisdicfio spiritualis over all territories from Cape 
 " Bojador usque ad Indos, qui Christi nomen colere dicuntur," and this 
 action had been expressly confirmed by Pope Nicolas v. in 1454, by 
 
442 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 his successor, Calixtus iii., in 1455, and by others. Now after 1522 
 the King of Portugal was also Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and 
 to him therefore belonged, according to these Bulls, rights of patronage 
 over all India. 
 
 K. (Chap. II. p. 96) 
 
 There is abundance of literature concerning this all-important epoch. 
 Some of the most valuable portions of it are Dr. W. Germann's large 
 biographies of the old Danish missionaries : Johajin Philipp Fabricius, 
 1865; Ziegetibalg unci Pliitschau, in two sections, 1868; Christian 
 Friedrich Schwartz, 1870. There are also appreciative sketches of these 
 honoured veterans in the Evang. Missionary Magazine for 1868. Other 
 works are Fenger's History of the Tranquebar Mission (in Danish), 
 and Rev. A. Westcott, Our Oldest Mission {Madras — described from 
 an Anglican sta?idpoint). 
 
 L. (Chap. II. p. 107) 
 
 Ziegenbalg's other writings are : Bibliotheca Malabarica, an index of 
 150 works belonging to Tamil literature; ■d.wA Die ausfi'ihrliche Beschrei- 
 bung des jnalaburischen Heide?itunis. In the eighteenth century all 
 South Indians were erroneously termed Malabarese, as were also the 
 Tamils. 
 
 M. (Chap. III. p. 151) 
 
 It used to be supposed that this strong language was quoted from 
 an ofificial resolution of the Company. It was Henry Morris who, with 
 praiseworthy diligence, proved (in the London Christian) that the words 
 were actually spoken at an assembly of the General Court held at the 
 East India House on May 23rd, 1793, in connection with the Charter 
 negotiations (cf. Free Church Record, 1903, p. 508). 
 
 N. (Chap. VII. p. 408) 
 
 How is this difference of figures to be accounted for? To answer 
 this question we shall be obliged to go into some detail and to consider 
 the missionary provinces of India one by one. We may at the same 
 time use the opportunity for giving as accurate a survey as possible of 
 the distribution of evangelical Christendom throughout the whole of the 
 Indian mission field : — 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 443 
 
 Table A 
 
 
 Decennial Missionary 
 Conference Statistics. 
 
 Government Census. 1 
 
 Dr. 
 
 Grunde- 
 mann.^ 
 
 
 (1890). 
 
 1900. 
 
 (1890). 
 
 1900. 
 
 1S98. 
 
 Assam 
 
 (I5>27S) 
 
 20,939 
 
 (9,581) 
 
 29,343 
 
 36,109 
 
 Bengal 
 
 (108,901) 
 
 123,609 
 
 (62,798) 
 
 133,447 
 
 123,749 
 
 United Provinces 
 
 (30,321) 
 
 108,990 
 
 (18,777) 
 
 60,716 
 
 90,835 
 
 Punjab 2 . . . 
 
 (20,729) 
 
 36,584 
 
 (14,419) 
 
 20,385 
 
 34,282 
 
 Rajputana . 
 
 (1,683) 
 
 3,972 
 
 (1,127) 
 
 2,525 
 
 2,132 
 
 Bombay (with Baroda) 
 
 (22,455) 
 
 30,649 
 
 (5,343) 
 
 40,838 
 
 23,272 
 
 Central India * . 
 
 (9,660) 
 
 23,380 
 
 (1,381) 
 
 16,749 
 
 7,394 
 
 Madras Presidency ^ . 
 
 (365-912) 
 
 506,019 
 
 (348,979)" 
 
 522,009 
 
 447,874 
 
 (559,661) 
 
 854,867 
 
 (462,403) 
 
 826,012 
 
 776,562 
 
 
 
 
 (566,154) 
 
 (825,466) 
 
 
 ^ These two columns must be used with caution : they omit the minor denomina- 
 tions ; and although these, when taken incidentally, may represent nothing but 
 insignificant stations, yet over 100,000 souls are lacking in the sum total (1890) 
 without our being able to find out what has become of them. The more exact 
 totals of the census tables are therefore placed at the foot of the table in brackets. 
 
 ^ Dr. Grundemann arranges his figures according to a different geographical 
 system ; his headings do not always precisely tally with those taken above. 
 
 ^ The Punjab, with the frontier provinces. 
 
 * Central India, Central Provinces, Berar, and Hyderabad. 
 
 ® Madras, Mysore, Cochin, and Travancore. 
 
 ® Here we have supplemented the number of Protestant Christians by 72,635 (a 
 number arrived at by means of the Decennial Tables) for the two states of Travancore 
 and Cochin, which are omitted in those Governmental Returns to which we have 
 access. 
 
 As will be seen, the difference is considerable. Whereas in one 
 group of figures the Government Census records 44,421 Protestant 
 Christians more than the Missionary Tables, in other districts it gives 
 72,549 more; thus whilst the totals seem to present a difference of 
 only 28,155, in reality that difference is 1 16,970, or more than one-eighth 
 of the entire sum total. Only in the detailed history of the various 
 districts can we examine these diverging figures and, partially at any 
 rate, explain them. We must, however, rest content with the assertion 
 that absolutely reliable figures concerning the sum total of Protestant 
 Christians in India are unobtainable. We should not even be able to 
 
444 
 
 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 ascertain it by limiting ourselves to the numbers of communicants, since 
 in that case we should lose the assistance furnished by the census 
 returns ; and further, the word " communicant " bears a very different 
 meaning among, for example, the Episcopal Methodists in the United 
 Provinces and the agents of the American Board in the Madura 
 district. 
 
 The members of Protestant mission churches, however, compose 
 only the lesser section of Indian Christendom. This latter numbers, 
 according to the Government Census of 1901, 2,923,241 souls, or 
 about I per cent. (0*99 per cent.) of the entire population of India. It 
 is distributed over the various provinces as follows (for the sake of 
 comparison, we give the corresponding census figures for 1881 and 
 1 89 1, and also the number of Protestant Christians) : — 
 
 Table B 
 
 
 1S81. 
 
 1891. 
 
 1901. 
 
 Of these, the 
 Government 
 
 Census for 
 1 90 1 gives as 
 
 Protestant 
 Christians — 
 
 Assam .... 
 
 7,093 
 
 16,844 
 
 35,969 
 
 29,343 
 
 Bengal .... 
 
 128,135 
 
 192,484 
 
 278,366 
 
 133,447 
 
 United Provinces . 
 
 47,673 
 
 58,518 
 
 102,955 
 
 60,716 
 
 Punjab and Frontier^ 
 Provinces . . j 
 
 33,699 
 
 57,135 
 
 76,312 
 
 20,385 
 
 Rajputana . 
 
 3,519 
 
 4,548 
 
 6,552 
 
 . 2,525 
 
 Bombay Presidency 
 
 145,925 
 
 170,655 
 
 227,778 
 
 40,838 
 
 Central India 
 
 20,373 
 
 20,666 
 
 36,080 
 
 16,749 
 
 Madras Presidency 
 
 1,391,998 
 
 1,642,618 
 
 2,011,404 
 
 522,009 
 
 Burma .... 
 
 84,219 
 
 111,982 
 
 133,619 
 
 80,224 
 
 This body of Christians, apart from the members of Protestant 
 mission churches, is made up of English people and Eurasians, of the 
 members of Roman Catholic mission churches, and of the Syrian 
 Church in Travancore. We give the figures of each community in 
 parallel columns for purposes of comparison : — 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 445 
 
 Table C 
 
 There live in— 
 
 Beside Pro- 
 testant Chris- 
 tians to the 
 number of— 
 
 Other 
 
 Christians 
 
 to the 
 
 number of— 
 
 Of whom the 
 
 Europeans 
 
 are as 
 
 under — 
 
 And the 
 Eurasians — 
 
 Assam .... 
 
 29,343 
 
 6,626 
 
 2,099 
 
 275 
 
 Bengal .... 
 
 133,487 
 
 144,919 
 
 27,489 
 
 20,893 
 
 United Provinces . 
 
 60,716 
 
 42,239 
 
 14,773 
 
 13,151 
 
 Punjab and P'rontier"^ 
 Provinces . . / 
 
 20,385 
 
 55,927 
 
 34,527 
 
 5,377 
 
 Rajputana . 
 
 2,525 
 
 4,027 
 
 1,928 
 
 S44 
 
 Bombay Presidency 
 
 40,838 
 
 186,940 
 
 31,970 
 
 6,946 
 
 Central India 
 
 16,749 
 
 59,076 
 
 13,420 
 
 6,469 
 
 Madras Presidency 
 
 522,009 
 
 1,463,018 
 
 18,369 
 
 35,549 
 
 Burma .... 
 
 Total for British India\ 
 (excluding Ceylon) J 
 
 80,224 
 
 53,395 
 
 9,885 
 
 8,449 
 
 825,466 
 
 2,016,167 
 
 169,677 
 
 87,030 
 
 In this connection, we may add: (i) that these figures are taken 
 from the Government Census returns for 1901, and are therefore to 
 be accepted as possessing only the relative reliability of that census ; 
 (2) that they are limited to British India, its protected states and 
 annexes. The small French and Spanish colonies can point to large 
 numbers of Roman Catholic Christians, but without exception they 
 lie outside the sphere of Protestant missions, and occupy, therefore, no 
 place in the statistics of such missions. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the sum totals of the results of Pro- 
 testant missions from the point of view of the principal home 
 churches which send out missionaries. We may classify these as 
 Anglicans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Congregationalists, 
 Lutherans (German, Scandinavian, and American Lutherans), and lesser 
 denominations. As basis of the following table we have taken not 
 the figures given in the Government Census, but those found in the 
 Decennial Missionary Conference Statistics : — 
 
446 
 
 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 Table D 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Province. 
 
 p 
 
 
 Ofwh 
 
 om there are — 
 
 
 Til 
 c 
 
 < 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 ll 
 
 1 
 
 . 3 
 
 c 
 .2 
 
 c 
 Q 
 
 Assam . 
 
 20,939 
 
 2,225 
 
 39 
 
 9,972 
 
 8,703 
 
 ... 
 
 
 ... 
 
 Bengal 
 
 123,609 
 
 32,762 
 
 5,477 
 
 19,716 
 
 3,775 
 
 2,243 
 
 47,278 
 
 12,933 
 
 United Provinces . 
 
 108,990 
 
 6,007 
 
 3,98s 
 
 438 
 
 97,725 
 
 762 
 
 
 -70 
 
 Punjab 
 
 36,584 
 
 9,921 
 
 22,242 
 
 1,585 
 
 2,064 
 
 
 171 
 
 1,630 
 
 Rajputana . 
 
 3,972 
 
 168 
 
 1,444 
 
 
 2,360 
 
 
 
 
 Bombay 
 
 30,649 
 
 7,426 
 
 4,993 
 
 
 5,737 
 
 8,925 
 
 7,649 
 
 1,654 
 
 Central India 
 
 23,380 
 
 3,446 
 
 4,188 
 
 495 
 
 8,289 
 
 ... 
 
 4,291 
 
 2,871 
 
 Madras Presidency 
 
 506,019 
 
 154,567 
 
 14,444 
 
 177,726 
 
 9,525 
 
 96,048 
 
 48,539 
 
 "320 
 
 Burma . 
 
 Total . 
 
 124,069 
 
 9,385 
 
 
 113,787 
 
 618 
 
 
 279 
 
 
 978,936 
 
 225,907 
 
 57,315 
 
 323,719 
 
 138,796 
 
 107,978 
 
 108,207 
 
 19,478 
 
 Thus the Baptists are, numerically speaking, by far the strongest 
 group, with 324,000, and that mainly because of their two dense 
 masses of adherents in the Nellore district and in Burma. The second 
 strongest group are the Anglicans with 226,000; then follow in de- 
 scending order the Methodists, with 139,000, and the Lutherans and 
 Congregationalists with 108,000 each; then, but only after a great gap, 
 come the Presbyterians with 57,000. The lesser denominations — not 
 connected with these larger groups, or dependent upon them, as the 
 case may be — stand for what is only an unimportant numerical success. 
 Amongst these lesser groups, whose lines of demarcation are often 
 hazy, we have reckoned the following : — 
 
 The American Women's Union Missionary Society with 
 
 The Gopalganj Bengal Evangelical Mission . ,, 
 
 The Indian Home Mission . . . . . ,, i 
 
 The Bethel Santal Mission 
 
 The Christian Women's Mission in the North- 
 
 West Province . . . . . , ,, 
 
 The Salvation Army 1 ,, 
 
 The Dunker Baptists in Gujarat . . . . ,, 
 
 The Christian Alliance Mission . . . . ,, 
 ^ But of. p. 449. 
 
 150 Chr 
 
 stian adher 
 
 250 
 1,030 
 1,503 
 
 " " 
 
 75 
 
 1,630 
 
 102 
 
 1,629 
 
 " 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 447 
 
 The Kurku and Central Indian Hill Tribes Mission . wilh 57 Christian adherents. 
 
 The Poona and Indian Village Mission . . . ,, 50 
 
 The Indigenous Mission, Ahmadnagar . . . ,, 327 
 
 The Pentecostal Mission ,, 100 
 
 The Friends' (Quaker) Mission . . . . ,, 1950 
 
 The American Mennonite Mission . . , . ,, 150 
 
 The Balaghat Mission 160 
 
 The KoUegal Mission „ 129 
 
 Ceylon and South India General Mission . . . ,, 191 
 
 and many small and even tiny missions, which do not even find a 
 place in the Decennial Missionary Conference Statistics. ^ 
 
 But our joy on reading these figures, which have only been com- 
 piled as a result of laborious calculation, is damped when we look at 
 Table IV in the Government Census (1901, p. 399). In spite of 
 many obvious errors, this table is too important, and we are too 
 frequently obliged to fall back upon it, to leave it out here. 
 
 Table E 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Of whom there are — 
 
 
 Province. 
 
 IS 
 
 "0 « 
 
 p 
 
 
 
 
 C 
 
 "So 
 c 
 
 i 
 
 
 .2 
 
 
 
 Si's 
 
 
 Assam 
 
 29,343 
 
 1,840 
 
 i6,oSo 
 
 9,969 
 
 4 
 
 27 
 
 1,423 
 
 Bengal 
 
 133,447 
 
 35>599 
 
 3,663 
 
 20,307 
 
 2,566 
 
 1,918 
 
 69,394 
 
 United Provinces 
 
 60,716 
 
 7,100 
 
 2,179 
 
 243 
 
 50,629 
 
 500 
 
 65 
 
 Punjab and Frontier) 
 States . . / 
 
 20,385 
 
 15,218 
 
 4,151 
 
 466 
 
 550 
 
 
 ... 
 
 Rajputana 
 
 2,525 
 
 138 
 
 557 
 
 45 
 
 269 
 
 
 ... 
 
 Bombay Presidency . 
 
 40,83s 
 
 22,399 
 
 4,944 
 
 28 
 
 3,606 
 
 9,019 
 
 782 
 
 Central India . 
 
 16,749 
 
 5,072 
 
 2,230 
 
 1,296 
 
 3,579 
 
 286 
 
 3.986 
 
 Madras Presidency . 
 
 522,009 
 
 284,911 
 
 8,550 
 
 118,911 
 
 6,247 
 
 25,572 
 
 77,806 
 
 Burma 
 
 For the whole of\ 
 India, plus Burma j 
 
 80,224 
 
 13,432 
 
 16 
 
 65,755 
 
 798 
 
 
 223 
 
 825,466 
 
 305,917 
 
 43,064 
 
 216,915 
 
 68,489 
 
 37,322 
 
 153,768 
 
 1 
 
 * As we have no more recent statistical tables for the whole of India than those of 
 the years 1900- 1901, the figures for these small missions have been taken from those 
 tables. Were we to make use of newer statistics, we should have no possible means 
 of general comparison. 
 
448 HISTORY OF INDIAN MISSIONS 
 
 We will now compare the main items on this table with the corre- 
 sponding ones taken from the Decennial Statistics on the previous 
 page. 
 
 Assam. — In Table D the Welsh Calvinists are included with the 
 Methodists ; in Table E, at their own desire, with the Presbyterians. 
 Table D overlooks the Assamese branch of the Gossner Mission, 
 whilst Table E includes 1423 Lutherans belonging thereto. Whereas 
 in every other case Table D includes in the Christian community 
 candidates for baptism and adherents, by some mistake the entries for 
 Chota Nagpur only take account of baptized converts ; the numbers 
 in Table E, therefore, come nearer the truth. 
 
 United Provinces. — The most remarkable and most perplexing 
 difference between the two tables concerns the number of Methodists 
 in this district — which is given in Table D as 97,725 and in Table E 
 as only 50,629, a difference of more than 47,000 Christians. Even 
 the census-taker was struck by this difference, and he explains it by 
 saying that a large number of relapses to heathenism had taken place, 
 and that more than one-third of those given as Christians in the 
 missionary statistics had declared themselves to be heathen. But this 
 explanation is highly improbable. 
 
 Punjab. — The number of the Presbyterians in Table E (41 51) is 
 clearly far too small, and the number in Table D (22,242) will come 
 near the truth. 
 
 Bombay. — The number of Anglicans (22,399) is much too high; 
 it is easily accounted for by the fact that 6991 Anglicans are entered 
 at Baroda, a place where the Anglicans have no work at all worth 
 mentioning. 
 
 Madras Presidency. — The Anglicans are again credited with far too 
 large a number in Table E — 284,911 ; in Table D the number given 
 is 154,567. The error is partly accounted for by the fact that for 
 Travancore 78,217 Anglicans are enrolled and only 10 Congregational- 
 ists ; whereas 35,515 Anglicans and 63,152 Congregationalists have been 
 counted in the calculations upon which Table D is based. There exists 
 apparently a tendency amongst the census officials in South India, and 
 perhaps also amongst the Christians themselves, to reckon as many as 
 possible the adherents of the State Church of India. The figures for 
 the Baptists in Madras and Burma are likewise confusing : in Table D 
 they are given as 177,776 and 113,787 respectively, as against 118,911 
 and 65,755 in Table E. In the basal calculations for Table D only 
 71,392 and 37,927 are mentioned. In the introductory remarks to the 
 Decennial Statistics (p. 1 1 1) it is pointed out that these numbers include 
 communicants only, and in the sum totals they have been tripled, 
 following the customary method of calculating probability in India, 
 which, strangely enough, only works out in the Madras Presidency to 
 the figures for the Nellore district and leaves out those for the out- 
 districts of the Telugu Mission. Thus the numbers given in Table 
 D are rather arbitrary. The Annual Report of the American Baptist 
 Missionary Society for the year ending December 31st, 1900, gives for 
 the Madras Presidency 120,553 Christians, and for Burma 118,959. 
 
APPENDIX 449 
 
 Thus the first total agrees fairly exactly with that given in Table E, and 
 we must perforce conclude that the number recorded in Table D 
 (177,726) has been overestimated by 57,000 ! On the other hand, the 
 total for Burma in Table E (65,755) is at least 50,000 short! It is 
 discouraging to find that what are, relatively, the most reliable statistics 
 at our disposal, do not help to account for such great differences. 
 Table D reckons 96,048 Congregationalists in Madras, Table E only 
 25,572; the latter number is incorrect. The leading missionaries of 
 this section instructed the members of their flock to return themselves 
 simply as Christians, without making use of any particular or denomina- 
 tional nomenclature ; many thousands of Congregationalists, therefore, 
 are to be found among the 101,926 classed as "denomination not 
 returned." On the other hand, when Table D only returns 48,539 
 Lutherans, as against 77,806 in Table E, it is the latter which is correct. 
 In the basal statistics for Table D the General Council Mission of the 
 American Lutherans, for instance, with its 6159 baptized adherents, or 
 a Christian community of some 10,000 {vide Report, 1900), is over- 
 looked ; and in the south the adherents of the Leipzig, Danish, and 
 Missouri Societies are given as only about 19,000, whereas, as a matter of 
 fact, those of the Leipzig Society alone (December 1900) number 20,819. 
 After these criticisms it will not excite surprise that the totals given, 
 especially those in Table E, attain no very high degree of probability. 
 The Anglican figures are far too high, whilst those for the Baptists, 
 Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Methodists are far too low. Only 
 in the case of the Lutherans are the sum totals arrived at in Table E 
 to be preferred to those of Table D. 
 
 We neglected to enumerate in Table E those classified in the 
 Census returns as: indefinite beliefs, 1334; denomination not 
 returned, 101,920; minor denominations, 21,815; Salvation Army, 
 18,847; 3,nd Quakers, 1275 — 3, total of 143,857. For the Salvation 
 Army the Missionary Statistics give a total for the Punjab only of 
 1630; we read, however, in the Census Report (p. 391, § 682) that the 
 Salvation Army in the Kaira district (Bombay) has some 11,000 
 adherents, and in Travancore {Intelligencer^ 1902, p. 748) 5290. 
 The Census Report would thus appear to be correct. A remarkable 
 conglomeration appears under the Census heading, " Lesser Denomina- 
 tions " (amongst the 21,815 here set down, some 10,321 are of the 
 " London Mission " and ought therefore to be numbered among the 
 Congregationalists). In this list we find " Christians," " Converted 
 Hindus," Dent (or Kent?) Christians, the Church of Christ (Weinbren- 
 nerians at Calcutta), the Disciples of Christ (at Chhattisgarh, Central 
 India), the Union Brothers (3482 are returned), the Evangelists (1966 
 returned), " Undenominational," " Unsectarian," " Nonconformists," 
 Dissenters, Plymouth Brethren, Adventists, Second Adventists, the 
 Milton Church, the New Jerusalem Church, the National Church, 
 the Pollelin Mission, the Praetorian Mission, " Others " Mission, Gospel 
 Mission, Kabul Mission, United Service Mission, etc. — a sad illustration 
 of the way in which the Missionary Church of India is rent asunder by 
 the ever-increasing number of " Free " missions. 
 29 
 
INDEX 
 
 xVaron, in, 112. 
 
 Abbanes, 27. ^ 
 
 Abbott, Dr., 239. 
 
 Abd al Malik, 36. 
 
 Abdul Masih, 157, 160, 427. 
 
 Abeel, Rev. D., 336. 
 
 Abhyapananda Swami, 387. 
 
 Aborigines, work among, 2 1 4, 415. 
 
 Abors, 226. 
 
 Abu Mt., 392. 
 
 Abyssinians, 35. 
 
 "Accommodation" policy, 69, 75. 
 
 Acosta, 52. 
 
 Acts of Thomas, 27. 
 
 Adams, Rev. — , 368, 369. 
 
 Adams, Miss, 358, 361. 
 
 Adam's House, 42. 
 
 Adam's Peak, 42. 
 
 Adiabene, 35. 
 
 Adi Samaj, 370. 
 
 Adyar, 385. 
 
 Agarpara, 335. 
 
 Agra, 74, 141, 145, 147, 153, 206, 212, 
 
 320, 353- 
 Agricultural Society of Bengal, 136. 
 Ahmadnagar, 200, 229, 233, 240, 296, 
 
 413- 
 Airthrey, 144. 
 Aix la Chapelle, 98. 
 Ajlaf, 15. 
 
 Ajmer, 212, 213, 348, 393, 413. 
 Ajodhya, 175, 269, 350. 
 Akbar, 73, 193. 
 Alangate, 84. 
 Aleppey, 76. 
 
 Alexander (C.M.S.), Rev. — , 293. 
 Alexander a Campo, 85, 86. 
 Alexio de Menezes, 45, 81, 85, 214. 
 Alfonso da Suza, 48. 
 Alfred, King, 36. 
 Aligarh, 240, 402. 
 Ali, Jani, 184, 427. 
 Allahabad, I So, 186, 200, 209, 212, 
 
 213, 227, 27s, 320, 326. 
 Almora, 227, 319, 320, 356, 357, 362, 
 
 363. 387. 
 Alwar, 213. 
 
 Amalapuram, 224. 
 
 Amarkantak, 198. 
 
 Amarwara, 216. 
 
 Ambala, 200, 352, 356, 357. 
 
 Ambalacada, 87. 
 
 Amboyna, 46. 
 
 Ambur, 222. 
 
 American Adventists, 226. 
 
 American and Scandinavian Alliance, 
 
 225. 
 American Baptist Missionary Union, 
 
 149, 161, 199, 216, 219, 229, 233, 
 
 303. 
 American Board, 146, 148, 149, 161, 
 
 170, 171, 199, 200, 201, 229, 233, 
 
 240, 283, 284, 313, 314, 31S, 425, 
 
 429, 436. 
 American Brethren in Christ, 226. 
 American Lutherans, 219. 
 American Presbyterian Mission Board, 
 
 199, 204, 213, 352, 426, 432. • 
 American United Presbyterians, 213, 
 
 .320, 352. 
 Amir Ali, 401, 
 Amir Singh, 99, 120. 
 Ammann, Rev. — , 283. 
 Amritsar, 194, 211, 220, 296, 319, 350, 
 
 35i> 354, 434- 
 Amroha, 212. 
 Anabaptists, 138. 
 Anandapur, 196. 
 xVnderson, Rev. John A., 161, 170, 
 
 183, 195- 
 Anderson, Rev. Rufus A., 170, 283, 
 
 298, 313, 418, 421, 428, 429. 
 Andrew, Rev. A., 322. 
 Angamale, So, 81, 82. 
 Angelus Franciscus, 89. 
 Anglican Episcopate, the, 273-280, 
 
 422, 434- 
 Animism, 17, 241-249, 253. 
 Anjuvannam, 34. 
 Annfield, 411. 
 "Anti-Christian," the, 390. 
 Antioch, 30, 31. 
 Aquaviva, R., 74. 
 Arabic, 14S. 
 
452 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Arachosia, 28. 
 
 Arajers, 214. 
 
 Arakan, 58. 
 
 Arati rite, 374. 
 
 Arcot, Nawab of, 98-100, 116, 118. 
 
 Arcot, North, 66, 68, 99, 199. 
 
 Arcot, South, 66, 68, 99, 226. 
 
 Armour, Rev. — , 291. 
 
 Arni, 199. 
 
 Arthington, R.. 226, 239. 
 
 Arulappen, 225. 
 
 Aryans, ID, 12. 
 
 Arya Samaj, 323, 392-396. 
 
 Arzal, 16. 
 
 Asaf, 98. 
 
 Asansol, 212. 
 
 Ashapura, 213. 
 
 Ashraf, 15, 16. 
 
 Assam, 5, 15, 141, 199, 216, 226, 244. 
 
 Assamese, 9, 11. 
 
 Assam Frontier Pioneer Mission, 226. 
 
 Asur, 250. 
 
 Atalla, 83, 84. 
 
 Athelstan, 36. 
 
 Atmaya Sabha, 368. 
 
 Atteridge, Father, 71. 
 
 Augustinians, 58, 74, 92. 
 
 Aur, 68. 
 
 Aurungzebe, 16, 74. 
 
 Aveling, 390. 
 
 Avicenna, 176. 
 
 Avidhya, 266, 267, 270. 
 
 Azamgarh, 157. 
 
 Baba Laikhan, 359. 
 
 Babylon, Patriarch of, 83. 
 
 Bachelor, Dr. O., 347- 
 
 Bacon, Rev. J. R., 293. 
 
 Badagas, 14, 50, 196, 302. 
 
 Badinath Roy, Rajah, 335, 338. 
 
 Baesdehi, 216, 224. 
 
 Bagdad, 30. 
 
 Baghars, Tekk, 30. 
 
 Baghars, Wadakk, 30. 
 
 Baghelkhandi, 302. 
 
 Bahrwal-Atari, 284. 
 
 Baidyanath, 358, 361. 
 
 Baihair, 226. 
 
 Bailey, 31. 
 
 Bailey, Rev. B., 292. 
 
 Bailey, Wellesley, 358-365. 
 
 Bairagi, 25, 388. 
 
 Baker, Rev. H., 214, 292. 
 
 Balabhadra, 246. 
 
 Balaghat, 226. 
 
 Balasore, I, 200. 
 
 Balshikahaks, 301. 
 
 Baluchistan, i, 5, 6. 
 
 Bandarulanka, 224. 
 
 Banerjea, 184, 337, 377, 414, 427- 
 
 Banerjea, K. C, 433. 
 
 Bangalore, 155, 160, 171, 174, 212, 
 
 226, 350, 383, 426. 
 Banka, 224. 
 
 Bankura, 212, 225, 320, 455. 
 Bannu, 351. 
 Baptism, 271. 
 Baptist Missionary Society, 131, 141, 
 
 142, 153, 201, 204, 283, 313, 318, 
 
 333. 425- 
 Baptist Missionary Society — 
 
 American Free Will, 200. 
 
 Danish American, 222. 
 
 English Particular, 200. 
 
 of New South Wales, 222. 
 
 of New Zealand, 222. 
 
 of Queensland, 222. 
 
 of S. Australia, 222. 
 
 of Tasmania, 222. 
 
 of Victoria, 222. 
 Barabanki, 211. 
 Baragur, 222. 
 Baranula, 46. 
 Barchen, 41. 
 Bardez, 71. 
 Bareilly, 211. 
 Barisal, 141, 153, 229. 
 Barlow, Gov. -Gen., 185. 
 Baroda, 212, 392. 
 Barrackpore, 205, 212. 
 " Barrack " system, 409, 414. 
 Barrows, Dr. J. H., 324. 
 Bartholomew, Apostle, 28, 29. 
 Baru, 291. 
 Basappa, 21. 
 Basharatpur, 411. 
 Basilius, Shekerallah, 89, 
 Basim, 224. 
 Basle, 159. 
 Basle Miss. Magazine, 57, 186, 187, 
 
 207, 250. 
 Basle Miss. Society, 173, 196, 
 201, 212, 283, 299, 312, 322, 
 411, 417, 426. 
 Bassein, 45, 57, 71, 80, 92, 199. 
 Batala, 284. 
 
 Bateman, Rev. R., 251, 284. 
 Battalagundu, 199. 
 Batumah, 36. 
 Bawa, J., 361, 362. 
 Beawar, 213, 348. 
 Beer, C. H., 224. 
 Belgaum, 155, 225. 
 Bellarmine, 59. 
 Bellary, 149, 155, 212, 320. 
 Benares, 23, 141, 147, 153, 155, 
 158, 175, 176, 212, 269, 350, 
 Benedict xiii., 70. 
 Benedict xiv., 70. 
 Benfey, 285. 
 
 Bengal, 12, 15, 129, 148, 153, 193, 
 219, 355- 
 
 197, 
 349, 
 
 157. 
 
 218, 
 
INDEX 
 
 453 
 
 Bengali, 9, 11, 136, 139, 140, 302. 
 
 Bengali, Mussulmani, 401. 
 
 Bendnck, Lord W., 179, 182, 183, 
 
 185, 188, 189, 191, 242. 
 Bento, 130. 
 Beracha Home, 224. 
 Berar, 223, 226. 
 Berhampur, 154, 217. 
 Berlin, 159. 
 
 Berlin Missionary Society, 198. 
 Beschi, 68, 107, in, 113, 287. 
 Bethany, 216. 
 Bethel, 216. 
 Bethesda, 216. 
 Bethlehem, 216. 
 Bethul, 216. 
 Bethune, D., 338, 
 Bethune College, 338, 376. 
 Betigeri, 196, 229, 349. 
 Betschler, 347. 
 Bezwada, 195, 218. 
 Bhagalpur, 215, 251, 302. 
 Bhagavad Gita, 44, 265, 384, 399. 
 Bhajans, 284. 
 Bhaktimarga, 25, 43, 250. 
 Bhandara, 349. 
 Bhaskara, Ravi Varma, 34. 
 Bhartpur, 227. 
 Bhatgaon, 73. 
 Bhatniri, 302. 
 Bhils, 238, 247. 
 Bhopal, 358. 
 Bhowanipur, 154, 419. 
 Bhuinhars, 12. 
 Bhuts, 246. 
 
 "Bible Cutter," the, 391. 
 Bible Societies, Auxiliary, 294. 
 Bible Translation, 107, 113, 114, 139, 
 
 140, 163, 287-294. 
 Bickersteth, Bp., 217, 
 Bie, 134. 
 
 Bihar, 5, 12, 153, 212, 218, 225. 
 Bihari, 9, II. 
 Bijapur, 57, 72. 
 Bijnor, 211. 
 Bikaniri, 302. 
 Bilaspur, 222. 
 Billawas, 416. 
 Bimlipatam, 73, 214. 
 Birbhum, 153, 355. 
 Bird, 224. 
 
 Bird, Miss (Mrs. Bishop), 339, 352. 
 Biru, 229. 
 Bisrampur, 213. 
 
 Blackett, Rev. W. B., 309, 424. 
 Blavatsky, Madame, 378-385. 389, 390. 
 Blue Mts., 196, 214. 
 Boalia, 213. 
 Bobadilla, N., 46. 
 Boer War, 238. 
 Bohme, 125. 
 
 Bombay, 15, 74, 75, 94, H^, I57, 158, 
 161, 180, 184, 195, 199, 212, 222, 
 224, 226, 236, 397. 
 
 Bommarasa, 116. 
 
 Bond, 362. 
 
 "Borderers," 324, 329, 407. 
 
 Bornemann, 103. 
 
 Borresen, H. P., 215, 303. 
 
 Bose, M. N., 226, 427. 
 
 Bose, Dr. A. M., 373. 
 
 Bose, Dr. N. K., 398. 
 
 Bose, Pastor, 360. 
 
 Bouchet, 68. 
 
 Boughton, Dr., 346. 
 
 Bourbon, J., 48. 
 
 Bourdonnais, La, 97, 98. 
 
 Bovingh, Rev. J. G., 106, no. 
 
 Bowden, E. S., 224. 
 
 Bower, Rev. H., 288. 
 
 Bowley, Rev. — , 290. 
 
 Bradlaugh, C, 382, 390. 
 
 Brahma, 24, 263-272. 
 
 Brahmans, 13-15, 19, 21, 54, 56, 57, 
 60, 62, 64, 65, 69, 85, 87, 230, 
 246, 251-255, 257, 260, 413. 
 
 Brahmaputra, 2, 216. 
 
 "Brahmavadin," 399. 
 
 Brahmaya Sabha, 368. 
 
 Brahmika Samaj, 376. 
 
 Brahmo Samaj, 178, 250, 323, 33S, 
 367-378, 385, 387, 393- 
 
 Brahui, 7. 
 
 Braidwood, 183. 
 
 Brandonius, 52. 
 
 Breithaupt, Rev. J. C, 103. 
 
 Britain, Miss, 340. 
 
 British and Foreign Bible Society, 156, 
 
 293, 295- 
 British and Foreign School Society, 
 
 334- 
 British Rule in India, 241, 242. 
 Brito, E. de, 83. 
 Broach, 39, 40, 222. 
 Brotherhood of Epiphany, 222. 
 Brown, Rev. D., 147. 
 Brown, Rev. Dr., 290. 
 Brown, Dr. Edith, 353. 
 Brunsdon, 134. 
 Buchanan, Rev. C, 33, 147, 150, 
 
 158. 
 Buckingham Canal, 218, 
 Buckley, Dr., 290. 
 Budain, 212. 
 
 Budden, Rev. J. H., 356, 362. 
 Buddha Gaya Maha Bodhi Sabha, 381, 
 
 382. 
 Buddhism, Buddhists, 161, 245, 247, 
 
 248, 253, 262, 366, 367, 379, 3S6. 
 Buldana, 226. 
 Bundelkhand, 218. 
 Burdwan, 157. 
 
454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Burma, I, 6, 141, 144, 161, 199, 201, 
 
 207, 244, 248, 274, 310. 
 Burmese, 139. 
 Burn, 291. 
 Burnell, Dr., 32, 33. 
 Bushanam, 184. 
 Butler, Dr., 211. 
 Buxar, 197. 
 
 Cabral, 44. 
 
 Cain, 293. 
 
 Calcutta, 131, 136, 145, 149, 153, 154, 
 156, 157, 161, 17s, 177, 17S, 180, 
 184, 212, 222, 284, 313, 424. 
 
 "Calcutta School Society," 334. 
 
 Caldwell, Bp., 246, 274, 302. 
 
 Calicut, 28, 44, 76, 87, 196, 349. 
 
 Cambridge Alission, 222. 
 
 Cambridge Nicholson Institution, 423, 
 
 Camerte, P., 48, 54, 55. 
 
 Campbell, Rev. D. E., 204. 
 
 Campbellites, 222. 
 
 Canadian Baptist Missionary Societies, 
 
 Canadian Presbyterian Missionary 
 
 Society, 213. 
 Cannanore, 196, 313. 
 Canning, Lord, 206, 209. 
 Capucines, 69, 73, 75, 94. 
 Caranja, 71, 198. 
 
 Carey, 130, 131, 133-144, mS, i53, 
 168, 177, 251, 269, 286, 288, 289, 
 290, 291, 302, 356. 
 Carleton, Dr., 352. 
 Carmelites, 75, 84-SS. 
 Carnatic, 66, 68, 99. 
 Cartaret, de, 227. 
 Casamajor, 196. 
 Caste, 19, 60, 67, III, 166-173, 178, 
 
 202, 247, 252, 255-262, 383. 
 Cator, Judge P., 329. 
 
 Causali, 302. 
 
 Cauvery, 68, 99, loi, 120, 158, 194, 
 426. 
 
 Cawnpore, 147, 148, 204,221-223, 319. 
 
 Celibacy, 82, 330. 
 
 Ceylon, I, 18, 32, 42, 53, 93, 102, 109, 
 117, 160, 201, 212, 248. 
 
 Ceylon and Indian General Mission, 
 226. 
 
 Chaitanya, 25, 249, 398. 
 
 Chakai, 349. 
 
 Chakarbutty, 184, 227, 414. 
 
 Chamars, 416. 
 
 Chamba, 195, 229, 352. 
 
 Chamberlain, Dr., 293. 
 
 Chambers, Sir R., 146. 
 
 Chambers, W., 146, 
 
 Chanala, 244, 
 
 Chand Tara, 184. 
 
 Chandag, 362. 
 
 Chandal, 268. 
 
 Chandernagore, 73, 134. 
 
 Chandgad, 227. 
 
 Chandkuri, 362. 
 
 Chandran, 292. 
 
 Chaplains, Indian, 97, 129, 147, 148, 
 157, 206. 
 
 Chapra, 197. 
 
 Charaka, 176. 
 
 Charles 11., 74. 
 
 Chater, Rev. J., 291. 
 
 Chatterjea, 377, 414, 427. 
 
 Chaupara, 213. 
 
 Cheek, Ensign, 205. 
 
 Chet Ram, 251, 367. 
 
 Cherrapunji, 217. 
 
 Cherumer Malayalams, 14. 
 
 Chhattisgarh, 222, 251. 
 
 Chhindwara, 216. 
 
 Chicacole, 73. 
 
 Chidambaram, 23. 
 
 Child marriages, 330, 332, 370. 
 
 Children's Special Service Mission, 
 328. 
 
 Chingleput, 99, 1 15, 41 1. 
 
 Chinsurah, 130, 134, 144, 145, 149, 
 152, 154, 2S1, 334. 
 
 Chinsurah and Hooghly Zenana Mis- 
 sion, 225. 
 
 Chiragh Ali, 401. 
 
 Chitral, 3, 6. 
 
 Chittagong, 73, 141, 153. 
 
 Chittapetta, 224. 
 
 Chittoor, 100, 155. 
 
 Chola country, the, 36, 99. 
 
 Chota Nagpur, 198, 207, 216, 222, 232, 
 244, 251, 275, 415. 
 
 "Christian College," the, 183, 381. 
 
 "Christian Endeavour," 328. 
 
 Christian Literature Societies, 296, 297, 
 
 305.. 
 
 "Christian Patriot," 301. 
 
 Christianpetta, 225. 
 
 Christian Realm Mission, 227. 
 
 " Christian Researches in Asia," 147. 
 
 Christo Samaj, 434. 
 
 Chunar, 157. 
 
 Chunder Sen, 223, 369-375. 
 
 Churahs, 12-14, 4i6. 
 
 " Church Council System," 430. 
 
 Church Missionary Society, 148, 155, 
 156, 158, 159, 160, 165, 194, 198, 
 201, 206, 208, 210, 211, 216, 217, 
 219, 225, 234, 238, 239, 277, 278, 
 279, 280, 284, 325, 333, 341, 351, 
 419, 421, 422, 423, 431, 432, 435. 
 
 Church of England Zenana Missionary 
 Society, 220, 2S0, 342, 343, 350. 
 
 Clarkabad, 211. 
 
 Clarke, Rev. A. J., 146. 
 
 Clement XL, 69, 70, 
 
INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Clement xii., 70. 
 
 Clement xiv., 88, 93. 
 
 Clive, 129. 
 
 Clough, Rev. J. E.,2i8. 
 
 Clough, Rev. B., 291. 
 
 Cochin, 4, 5, 19, 29, 35, 45. 57, 58. 
 71. 74, 75, 76, 79, 80, 82, 85, 86, 
 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 93, 219, 274. 
 
 Cockey, Rev. II. E., 204. 
 
 Coconada, 214. 
 
 Coimbatore, 28, 155, 197, 224, 226. 
 
 Coimbra, 54. 
 
 Colaba, 212, 361. 
 
 Colebrooke, 137. 
 
 Coles, Rev. S., 292. 
 
 CoUegal, 224. 
 
 Colleges of India, 319, 320. 
 
 Collegium de cursu, etc., 109. 
 
 Colombo, 85, 365. 
 
 " Colonial Church Act," 275. 
 
 Comilla, 197. 
 
 Comorin, C., i, 42, 48, 53, 58. 
 
 "Congregatio de propaganda fide," 
 
 75, 77- 
 Congress, Religious, Chicago, 324, 
 
 385. 
 Conjeeveram, 186, 349. 
 Constant, Louis, 379. 
 Constantine, Emperor, 29. 
 Cook, Rev. J., 324. 
 Cooke, Miss, 334-336, 340. 
 Coonoor, 226. 
 Coorg, 7, 14, 196. 
 Copenhagen, 162. 
 Copleston, Bp., 278, 279. 
 Cordes, 197, 285. 
 Cornelius, 215, 224. 
 Cornwallis, Lord, 148. 
 Coromandel, 36, 45, loi. 
 Corrie, Bp., 147, 157, 190. 
 Cosmas Indicopleustes, 31-33, 40. 
 Costa, J. da, 130. 
 Cottar, 37. 
 
 Cottayam, 33, 320, 423. 
 Cotton, Bp., 324. 
 Cotton, Sir A., 217. 
 Coulomb, Madame, 381. 
 "Courts of Arbitration," 229. 
 Covilhas, P. de, 44. 
 Cowley Fathers, 222. 
 Cran, Rev. G., 145. 
 Craufurd, 132. 
 Crefeld, 95. 
 Cuddalore, 75, 96, 98, 112, 1 13, 1 16, 
 
 125, 129, 213. 
 Cuddapah, 155, 219. 
 Cufic, 33, 34. 
 Cust, R., 210. 
 Custodius, 87. 
 Cutch, 13. 
 Cutchi, 302. 
 
 Cuttack, 251. 
 Cyncilim, 41. 
 
 Dacca, 141, 197, 251. 
 
 Daivam, 270. 
 
 Dal, no. III, 
 
 Dalhousie, Lord, 202, 337. 
 
 Daman, 57, 93, 96. 
 
 Damtari, 226. 
 
 Danish Mission, the, 96-127, 161, 169, 
 
 .333- . 
 Danish Missionary Society, 173, 213. 
 Darbhanga, 197. 
 Darbyites, 195, 224, 335. 
 Dardistan, 3. 
 Darjeeling, 213, 225, 376, 
 Darsanas, 23, 263. 
 Darwin, 391. 
 Das, Ganesa, 130. 
 Dasseris, 68. 
 Daud Birsa, 251, 367. 
 David, 169. 
 Dawson, 302. 
 Day, L. B., 184, 427. 
 Dayanand, 392-396. 
 Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, 396, 
 Dease, Dr., 352. 
 Deccan, 2. 
 
 Decennial Missionary Tables, 407, 408. 
 Deharis, 247. 
 
 Dehra Dun, 200, 320, 360. 
 Delhi, 16, 74, 141, 153, 194, 204, 223, 
 
 319, 343- 
 Demetrius, 29. 
 Demetrius of Tiflis, 39. 
 Density of population, 5, 6. 
 Deogarh, 358. 
 Deoli, 213. 
 
 Dera Ghazi Khan, 211, 351. 
 Dera Ismail Khan, 211, 351, 352. 
 Derajat, 211. 
 
 Desgranges, Rev. A., 145, 293. 
 Deussen, 384, 391. 
 Devajaga, 43. 
 Devan, 270. 
 " Devil dance," 246. 
 Dhanjibhai, N., 427. 
 Dharamtola St., 154. 
 Dhareyaygul, 37. 
 Dharmsala, 360. 
 Dharwar, 196, 250. 
 Dhokal, Parshad, 205. 
 Dhond, 240. 
 Diamond Harbour, 212. 
 Diamper, Synod of, 82, 85. 
 Diego, III. 
 Diemer, 130, 
 Dilger, 292, 304. 
 
 Dinajpur, 133, 134, 141, 148, 149. 
 Dindigul, loo, 199, 296. 
 " Diocesan Boards," 228, 
 
456 
 
 INDEX 
 
 12, 214, 24S. 
 302. 
 
 "Disciples of Christ," 222. 
 
 Diu, 39, 45. 57, 58, 7i, 92, 93, 96. 
 
 Divus, 29, 30. 
 
 Doab, 16, 193, 218, 235. 
 
 Dominicans, 38, 39, 44, 58, 71, S3. 
 
 Donate, F., S3. 
 
 Donelly, 379. 
 
 Doremus, Mrs., 340. 
 
 Dowlaishvaram, 224. 
 
 Downes, Dr., 351. 
 
 Drake, Miss, 224. 
 
 Dravidians, 6, 7, S, 
 
 Drose, Rev. — , 215, 251 
 
 Dualism, 263. 
 
 Dublin University Mission, 222. 
 
 Dubois, 69, 92-94. 
 
 Duckworth, Canon, 220. 
 
 Dudhi, 217. 
 
 Duff, 161, 168, 173-184, 195, 242, 286, 
 
 296, 300, 307, 316, 337, 369, 377, 
 
 413, 414- 
 Dufferin, Lady, 350, 357. 
 Dum Dum, 157, 212. 
 Dummagudem, 217. 
 Dundas, 150. 
 Dupleix, 97, 98. 
 Durga, 22, 23, 246. 
 Dutch, decay of, 91. 
 Dutch Reformed Church of America, 
 
 200. 
 Dutch, Rise of, 85. 
 Dutt, 184, 377, 414. 
 Dutt, N. N., 387. 
 Dwija, 15. 
 Dyer, Dr., 143. 
 Dyophisitism, 89. 
 
 East India Company — 
 
 Danish, loi, 103, 162. 
 
 Dutch, 85. 
 
 English, 85, 99, 12S, 13 
 144, 145, 192, 209. 
 
 Charter of, 97, 147, 149-153 
 208, 273, 
 Ebed Jesu, 80. 
 
 " Echoes of Service," 225, 226. 
 Eddapally, Synod of, 83. 
 Edessa, 28, 30, 32. 
 Edinburgh Mission to Lepers, 365. 
 Education, 137, 173-184, 307-323. ■ 
 Educational Dispatch, 1854, 180, 1S2 
 Edward vii., 219. 
 Edwardes, Sir H., 194, 207, 211, 
 Eickhom, Frau, 336. 
 Ekantinas, 43. 
 Elakurichi, 68. 
 
 Elementary education, 183, 309-312. 
 Elias, 76, So. 
 
 Ellenborough, Lord, 183, 205. 
 Ellerton, 288, 289. 
 Ellichpur, 216, 224. 
 
 !2, 135, 
 92, 
 
 Ellore, 195. 
 
 Elmslie, Dr., 351. 
 
 Englishmen, 176. 
 
 English Presbyterian Missionary 
 
 Society, 213. 
 English-speaking India, 322-324. 
 "Epiphany," 301, 325. 
 "Episcopal Synod," 1877, 276. 
 Epworth League, 328. 
 " Erasmus of India," the, 36S. 
 Eurasians, 130, 333. 
 Eutychianism, 89. 
 Exeter Hall, 190. 
 Exploration of India, 135. 
 Ezour Vedam, 67. 
 
 Fabricius, Rev. P., 11 3- 116, 126, 130, 
 
 166, 270, 2S5, 288. 
 Fairbairn, Dr., 324. 
 "Faith" missionar}-, 225. 
 "Faith" orphanage, 239. 
 Famines in India, 193, 217, 218, 234, 
 
 235, 237-239, 410. 
 Fanderina, 41. 
 Farrukhabad, 205. 
 Fata Morgana, 266. 
 Fatehganj, 212. 
 Fatehgar, 200, 204, 205. 
 Fatehpur-Sikri, 212. 
 Fells, Dr., 354. 
 Fenger, 126. 
 Fenn, Rev. D., 284. 
 Fereira, 291. 
 Fergusson, 195. 
 "Ferishta," 209. 
 Fernandes, 59, 62. 
 Fetishism, 23. 
 Fisher, 131. 
 Florentius, 92. 
 Fonseca, da, Archbp., 45. 
 Foote, 390. 
 Forbes, Gordon, 154. 
 Fordyce, Rev. J., 338. 
 Forman, Dr. C. W., 200, 352, 359. 
 Forsyth, Rev. N., 145. 
 Fort Dansborg, loi. 
 Fort William College, 135, 136, 147. 
 Fountain, Rev. J., 133. 
 Francis, P., 132^ 
 
 Franciscans, 38, 39, 44, 45, 58, 71, 74. 
 Franckes, the, 103, 116, 126, 163. 
 " Frauenverein fiir Bildung," etc., 198. 
 Frederick IV., 102. 
 Frederiksnagar, 131. 
 Freeman, Rev. J, E., 204. 
 French, Bp., 184, 424. 
 Frere, Sir B., 209, 220. 
 Friaul, 41. 
 
 " Friend of India," 137. 
 Fritz, 292. 
 Frohnmeyer, 292. 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Frois, 52, 
 
 Fry, Mr. H. W., 413. 
 
 Fry, Dr. E. S., 348. 
 
 Fuller, Andrew, 142, 150, 224. 
 
 Fyvie, Rev. W. , 291. 
 
 Fyzabad, 211, 212. 
 
 Gama, V. da, 44, 79. 
 
 Gandulpura, 153. 
 
 Ganesa, 25, 384. 
 
 Ganges, 2, 3, 58. 
 
 Ganguli, 184. 
 
 Garden Reach, 157. 
 
 Garhwal, 3. 
 
 Garo, 216, 298, 303. 
 
 Uarzia, 83, 84, 87. 
 
 Gaspar, 52. 
 
 Gauhati, 199. 
 
 Gavan, J., 46. 
 
 Gaya, 185. 
 
 Gazerta, 76. 
 
 Geister, 126. 
 
 "Genealogy of Deities of Malabar," 
 
 107, 285. 
 " General Assembly Institution," 195, 
 
 387. 
 "General Baptist Missionary Society," 
 
 153- 
 "General Council," 173, 198. 
 "General Synod," 173, 198. 
 Gericke, 113, 121, 161. 
 German colonies, 151. 
 Germann, Dr. W., 107, 285. 
 German Protestant Synod of North 
 
 America, 213. 
 Germany, 258. 
 George, Archdeacon, 81, 83. 
 George a Campo, 86. 
 Ghasi Das, 22, 251. 
 Ghasis, 395. 
 Ghats, 2, 4, 76. 
 Ghazipur, 197, 198, 283. 
 Ghoom, 225. 
 Ghose, M. C., 184, 415. 
 Ghose, S. K., 398. 
 Ghurkhas, 225. 
 Gilder, Mrs., 237. 
 Glenelg, Lord, 189, 190. 
 Goa, 44-49, 55-58, 71, 74, So, 81, 84, 
 
 92, 93. 96. 
 Goanese, 130. 
 
 Godavari, 195, 217, 219, 224, 235. 
 Godhpur, 393. 
 Godwin, Mr., 387. 
 Goes, L., 57. 
 
 Gogerly, Rev. D. J., 291, 292, 
 Gojra, 235. 
 Golconda, 72. 
 Gomalti, 133. 
 Gomez, 55. 
 Gonda, 211. 
 
 [97, 198, 
 
 30, 133. 134. 146, 
 System, 152, 154, 
 
 353- 
 157- 
 
 Gondophares, 27, 28. 
 
 Gonds, 7, 198, 215, 216, 247, 284 
 
 302. 
 Gondwana, 198. 
 Gopelganj, 226. 
 Gopinath Nundy, 184, 205. 
 Gorakhpur, 157, 319, 320. 
 Gorakpanthi, 22. 
 Gordon, Rev. John, 293. 
 Gordon, Rev. Maxwell, 284, 352. 
 Goreh, N., 269, 303, 414, 427. 
 Gosain, 25. 
 
 " Gospel Witness," 436. 
 Gossner and his Mission, 
 
 215, 229, 282, 364, 415. 
 Graham, Dr., 239. 
 Grant, 134. 
 Grant, Charles, 
 
 150, 273. 
 Grant, Dr., 352. 
 " Grant in Aid 
 
 182, 311. 
 Graul, Dr. K., 167, 260, 285, 302 
 Gray, Rev. J. H., 422. 
 Gray, Rev. W., 284.! 
 Green, Dr. S., 347. 
 Greenfield, Dr. Rose. 
 Greenwooci, Rev. — , 
 Gregory, John, 89. 
 Gregory of Tours, 32. 
 Gregory, Pope, 64. 
 Gregson, 226. 
 Gribble, Judge, 381. 
 Grierson, Dr., 11. 
 Griswold, Dr., 404, 405. 
 Grotto of St. Thomas, 65. 
 Groves, A., 195, 224. 
 Grubb, Rev. — , 324. 
 Grundemann, Dr., 407, 408 
 Grtindler, Dr., 106, 170. 
 Gubbi, 160. 
 Gudur, 213. 
 Guevara, 105. 
 " Guide to Christian Life 
 Guilford, Rev. E., 359. 
 Guimaraes, S. de, 79. 
 Guinness, Dr. Grattan, 225. 
 Gujarat, 10, 13, 45. IS5. I9S, 213, 222, 
 
 224, 240, 352. 
 Gujarati, 9. 
 Gujranwala, 213, 236. 
 Gulbarga, 212. 
 Guledgudd, 196. 
 Gundert, Dr., 33, 115, 197,270,271, 
 
 292, 302. 
 Guntur, 198, 219, 319, 320. 
 Gurney, Rev. Dr., 290. 
 Guru, 61. 
 Gurudatta, 394. 
 Gurukula, 396. 
 Guru Nanak, 366. 
 
 54- 
 
458 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gurupadam, ii6. 
 Gutzlaff, Dr., 198. 
 
 Haberlin, Dr., 288. 
 Hackel, Ernst, 391. 
 Hadjipore, 197. 
 Haffldne, Dr., 237. 
 Hagert, A., 215. 
 Hahn, Rev. F., 239, 302. 
 Haidar AH, 90, 100, 113, 
 
 14, 119, 
 
 Haigh, General, 217, 284. 
 
 Haigh, Rev. Henry, 24, 269, 292, 301, 
 
 306. 
 Haileybury, 136. 
 Haine, Sir F., 372. 
 ITaldane, R., 144. 
 Halifax, Lord, 180. 
 Hall, Pastor C, 324. 
 Hall, F. E., 303. 
 Hall, Rev. G., 149. 
 Halle, 162, 163, 164, 286. 
 Hamilton, Dr., 346. 
 Handmann, 167. 
 Hands, Rev. J., 292. 
 Happel, Julius, 304. 
 Haracti, 302. 
 Harding, 428. 
 
 Hardinge, Sir H., 179, 1S2. 
 Hardoi, 211. 
 Hard war, 3, 23, 13 1. 
 Hardwicke College, Mysore, 426. 
 Harms, Pastor L., 173. 
 Harnam, Singh Ahluwalia, Sir, 32S. 
 "Harvest Field," 300. 
 Haskell, Miss €., 324. 
 Haslam, Rev. W., 324. 
 Hassius, J. S., 103-109. 
 Hastings, Marquess of, 131, 145, 147, 
 
 335- 
 Hastings, Warren, 129, 132. 
 Haubroe, Rev. L. P., 168, 169. 
 Haug, Prof., 33. 
 Havelock, Sir H., 204. 
 Hawa, 186. 
 Hay, Dr. John, 293. 
 Haycock, Rev. W. H., 204. 
 Hazaribagh, 222, 319, 320. 
 Heber, Bp., 157, 168, 169, 276. 
 Hebich, Rev. S., 197, 2S2, 2S3. 
 Hee Waduni, 162, 
 Henzada, 199. 
 
 Hephzibah Evangelistic Mission, 226. 
 Herrmannsburg Missionary Society, 
 
 173, 213, 432. 
 Herrnhut, 124, 303. 
 Heurnius, J., 346. 
 Hewlett, Miss, 352. 
 Himalaya Missionary Union, 194, 197. 
 Himyarites, 29, 35. 
 Hindi, 9, 136, 139, 148, 301, 302. 
 
 " Hindu College," 384. 
 
 Hinduism, 21, 243-272, 383, 386, 388, 
 
 389, 400. 
 Hindustan, 129, 145. 
 Hindustani, 12, 16, 148, 176. 
 " Hindu Tract Society," 389-392. 
 Hislop, Dr., 183, 195. 
 Hoffmann, Rev. W., 196, 336. 
 Holcomb, Rev. — , 290. 
 Hollands, Rev. V. E. S., 326. 
 Hooghly, 73, 74. 
 Hook-swinging, 189. 
 Hooper, Dr. W., 290, 424. 
 Hornle, Dr., 11, 289. 
 Hos, the, 18. 
 Hoshangabad, 213, 351. 
 Hostels, Mission, 325, 326. 
 Hough, Chaplain, 158. 
 Howrah, 225. 
 
 Hubbard, Rev. A. R., 204. 
 Hubli, 196, 236, 250. 
 Hume, Dr., 239. 
 Humphrey, Rev. — , 277. 
 Hung Tsiu Tseuen, 252. 
 Hunter, Rev. — , 205. 
 Hunter, Sir W., 209, 309. 
 Huntley, Dr. W., 353. 
 Huonder, Father, 95. 
 Htittemann, Rev. G. H., 116, 163. 
 Hyderabad, 72, 202, 212, 294. 
 
 Iballaha, 76. 
 
 Ibbetson, Sir D., 19. 
 
 Idolatry, 23, 26, 249. 
 
 Ilahi, 73. 
 
 Imad-ud-Din, 414, 427. 
 
 Indian Baptist Missionary Society, 225. 
 
 " Indian Evangelical Review," 300. 
 
 " Indian Home Mission," 215, 415. 
 
 " Indian Mirror," 378. 
 
 Indian National Missionary Society, 
 
 436- 
 " Indian Railway Mission," 225, 
 Indo-Aryan languages, 9. 
 Indore, 213, 320, 396. 
 Indra, 264. 
 Indus, 2. 
 " Industrial Evangelistic Mission," 
 
 240. 
 "Industrial Missionary Aid Society," 
 
 413- 
 
 " International Bible Readers' Associa- 
 tion," 328. 
 
 "International Christian Alliance," 
 223. 
 
 Iravi Korttan, 34. 
 
 Irish Presbyterians, 195. 
 
 Irulers, 215. 
 
 Isenberg, 291. 
 
 " Isis Unveiled," 379. 
 
 Islamabad, 153, 351, 352. 
 
INDEX 
 
 459 
 
 Iso Data, 35. 
 
 Isvara, 270. 
 
 "Itinerant Preachers' Mission, 
 
 284. 
 
 Jackson, Mr., 361. 
 
 Jacobites, 89, 90. 
 
 Jaffna, 51, 64, 74, 161, 199. 
 
 Jagannath, 139, 185. 
 
 jagraon, 352. 
 
 Jains, 22, 217, 249, 3S6. 
 
 Jaipur, 74, 213, 221, 238, 302. 
 
 Jalalpur, 352. 
 
 Jalna, 349. 
 
 Janialpoie, 225. 
 
 James of Padua, 39. 
 
 Jameson, Capt., 336. 
 
 Jamtara, 215, 224. 
 
 Jandiala, 350. 
 
 Janeo, 15. 
 
 [anicke, Dr., 159, 161. 
 
 Janssen, 94. 
 
 Jashpur, 229. 
 
 Jats, 12, 13. 
 
 Jaunpur, 157. 
 
 Java, 145. 
 
 Javan, 139. 
 
 Jay Narain College, 158. 
 
 [ay Narain Ghosal, 158, 338. 
 
 Jehangir, 74. 
 
 Jehan, Shah, 74. 
 
 Jellalabad, 211. 
 
 Jellasor, 200. 
 
 Jerusalem, 27, 30. 
 
 Jerusalem, Statute of, 275. 
 
 Jessore, 141, 149. 
 
 Jesudasen, 35. 
 
 Jesuits, 45, 46, 48, 69, 71, 73, So, 81, 
 
 82, 84, 93- 
 Jesu-Jabus, 35. 
 Jhang Bar, 235. 
 Jhansi, 218. 
 Jhelum, 235, 352. 
 Jhengiz Khan, 38. 
 Joao II., 44. 
 
 Joao III., 44, 45, 48, 51, 52, 54, 56. 
 Joao, Bishop, 45. 
 Jodhpur, 213, 348, 352. 
 Johala, 21. 
 
 John, Bp. of Persia, 29. 
 John, an impostor, 37. 
 John of Marignola, 42. 
 John of Monte Corvino, 39. 
 John, Rev. — , 123, 162, 163. 
 John the Baptist, Bishop, 87. 
 Johns, Rev. — , 145. 
 Johnson, Rev. A. O., 204. 
 Johnson, Rev. — , 269. 
 Jones, Dr., 399. 
 Jones, Rev. W. L., 217. 
 Jordan, 39, 40, 106. 
 Josenhaus, 283. 
 
 Joseph of Santa Maria, 84, 85. 
 
 Jowai, 217. 
 
 Juan a Cruce, 49. 
 
 Juan de Brito, 68. 
 
 Juangs, 246. 
 
 Jubbulpore, 216. 
 
 Judson, Rev. A., 144, 149, 161. 
 
 Jullundur, 200. 
 
 Jumna, 235. 
 
 "Jungle Tribes Mission," 227. 
 
 Junta of Goa, 56. 
 
 Justinian, 35. 
 
 Kabir, 22, 250. 
 
 Kabirpanthi, 22, 250, 366 
 
 Kacha Khuh, 227. 
 
 Kachhi, 13, 245. 
 
 Kadhar, 224. 
 
 Kaisar i Hind, 239. 
 
 Kalagnanas, 250. 
 
 Kalahasti, 213. 
 
 Kali, 25, 189, 246. 
 
 Kalimali, 227. 
 
 Kalimpong, 213, 239. 
 
 Kalian, 121. 
 
 Kalyan, 21, 31, 32, 40. 
 
 Kamageri, 224. 
 
 Kammaler, 34, 35. 
 
 Kammerer, Rev. A. F., 165. 
 
 Kampti, 212, 
 
 Kanara, 4, 21, 196, 283, 411. 
 
 Kanarese, 7, 72, 149, 155, 196. 
 
 Kanauji, 302. 
 
 Kandh, 7, 217. 
 
 Kandy, 296. 
 
 Kangra, 194, 351. 
 
 Kangri, 396. 
 
 Karachi, 212. 
 
 Karen, 161, 199, 207, 244, 247, 250, 
 
 303- 
 Karikal, 96. 
 Karma Marga, 25, 2 50. 
 Karmarkar, 427. 
 Karmatar, 224. 
 Karta Bhoja, 251. 
 Kashipur, 186. 
 
 Kashmir, 3, 6, 12, 15, 211, 21 8, 238. 
 Kashmiri, 9, 11. 
 Kasim Khan, 74. 
 Kasra, 250. 
 Kathavul, 270. 
 Kathiawar, 195, 392. 
 Katmandu, 73. 
 Kattanars, 78, 81-S5. 
 Katwa, 141. 
 Kaye, 189, 191. 
 Kellett, Rev. T. W., 325. 
 Kellogg, Dr., 290. 
 Kerala, 34. 
 Keti, 196. 
 Khandesh, 224. 
 
460 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Kharmatar, 224. 
 
 Khasia or Khassi, 141, 217, 247, 298, 
 
 303- 
 Khedgaon, 227, 239, 240. 
 Kherwara, 217. 
 Kherwarian, 8. 
 Khorasan, 2. 
 Khyber Pass, 211. 
 Kidderpur, 157. 
 Kiernander, Rev. J. Z., 113, 115, 129, 
 
 130, 131- 
 Kinnaird, Lady, 341. 
 Kirk, 363. 
 
 Kistenmacher, no, in. 
 Kistna, 195, 235, 322. 
 Klein, Dr. J., 123, 346. 
 Klopsch, Dr., 239, 240. 
 Knobloch, 292. 
 Knowles, 291. 
 Koch, 204. 
 Kodagu, 7. 
 Kodaikanal, 436. 
 Kodakal, 196. 
 Kodungalur, 34, 
 Kodur, 213. 
 Koefoed, 226. 
 Kohistani, 9. 
 Kohlhoff, 122, 165, 166. 
 Koi, 217, 302. 
 Kolar, 212. 
 Kolarian, 8, 214, 248. 
 Kols, 198, 207, 215, 216, 217 
 
 222, 229, 244, 245, 250, 251 
 Konig, Dr., 346. 
 Konkan, 161. 
 Koran Purana, 309. 
 Koraput, 221. 
 Korolongata, 78, 85, 88. 
 Kosiii Koshi, 292. 
 Kota, 7, 215, 302. 
 Kotapad, 221. 
 
 Kotgarh, 194, 197, 198, 351. 
 Kranganur, 30, 31, 34, 55, 74, 76, 79, 
 
 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 93. 
 Kreyher, 304. 
 Kripananda Swami, 3S7. 
 Krishna, 22, 24, 249, 398. 
 Krishnagar, 193, 201, 206, 224, 251, 
 
 350, 417, 419, 424, 431. 
 Krishnagiri, 222. 
 Kshatriya, 18, 21, 230. 
 Kubla Khan, 38. 
 Kudumi, 64. 
 Kuhhnann, 238. 
 Kulna, 349, 352. 
 Kumaon, 3, 302, 362. 
 Kumhiakonani, 155, 197. 
 Kumhars, 18. 
 Kunawar, 199. 
 Kunnankulam, 225. 
 Kurdistan, 77. 
 
 219, 
 
 415- 
 
 Kurku and Central Indian Hill Mission, 
 
 216, 224, 303. . 
 Kurmis, 18. 
 Kurseong, 376. 
 Kurukh, 7, 302. 
 Kurumbans, 215. 
 Kut Humi, 380-382. 
 Kyelang, 199. 
 
 Lacroix, Rev. A. F., 168, 281, 339. 
 
 Ladakh, 199. 
 
 Lahnda, 9, il. 
 
 Lahore, 81, 180, 200, 211, 274, 326, 
 
 354, 392, 396, 424, 434- 
 Laidler, Dr., 174. 
 Lake, Gen. E., 210. 
 Lally, Count, 97, 98. 
 Lange, J., 103. 
 " Laocoon," 140. 
 Larsen, L. P., 327. 
 Lawrence, Sir H., 194, 204, 207, 209. 
 Lawrence, Sir J., 194, 207. 
 Lawson, Rev. — , 240. 
 Laynez, 69. 
 Lazarus, Rev. F., 385. 
 Lee, Rev. — , 240. 
 Leh, 199. 
 Leipzig Missionary Society, 170, 173, 
 
 197, 222, 234, 257, 260, 261, 282, 
 
 288, 297, 426. 
 Leitao, Bp., 88. 
 Leitch, Dr., 347. 
 Leith, Rev. D. G. M., 325. 
 Leopold, Emperor, 87. 
 Leper Missions, 355-365. 
 Leprosy, 355, 
 Leupolt, Rev. C. B., 193. 
 Leupolt, Mrs., 339. 
 Lewis, 293. 
 Lex loci, 191. 
 Lhasa, 73. 
 
 " Librarian," the, 398. 
 Lingaites, 21, 22. 
 Literati, 299. 
 Lohr, Julius, 239. 
 London, 162-164. 
 London Missionary Society, 145, 146, 
 
 154, I55> 174, 201, 219, 333, 429, 
 
 436- 
 " Lone Star," the, 199. 
 Lord, Dr., 347. 
 Lorinser, Dr., 44. 
 Lorrain, 226. 
 Love-feasts, 170. 
 Lowe, Dr., 348. 
 Loyola, 45, 46, 52. 
 Lucknow, 204, 211, 212, 275, 284, 
 
 320. 
 Ludhiana, 200, 227, 236, 296, 353. 
 Lutheran Conference, All Indian, 436. 
 " Lutheran Swarm," 107, 112. 
 
INDEX 
 
 461 
 
 Lutkins, Dr., 102, 106. 
 Lyallpur, 235. 
 
 Maabar, 38, 41. 
 Mabap, 409, 41 1, 428. 
 Macaulay, Col., 33. 
 Macaulay, T. B., 242. 
 Mackay, Rev. J., 204. 
 Mackichan, Dr., 291. 
 Maclaren Settlement for Lepers, 360. 
 Madanapalli, 20O. 
 Maddox, 292. 
 Madhyadesa, 11. 
 
 Madigas, 195, 232, 234, 240, 248, 416. 
 Madras, 75, 96, 97, 98, 100, 109, 112, 
 113, 119, 120, 125, 145, 149. 155. 
 157, 158, 161, 168, 169, 180, 184, 
 197, 201, 206, 212, 219, 226, 320, 
 334, 343, 421, 423> 436- 
 " Madras Native Christian Provident 
 
 Fund," 419. 
 Madrissa, 175, 176. 
 
 Madura, 24, 26, 50, 59, 62, 67, 68, 71, 
 82, 92, 93, 99, 100, loi, 118, 125, 
 170, 197, 199. 296, 419, 425- 
 Mahabharata, 43, 44. 
 Mahadevapatnam, 30. 
 Mahars, 200, 248, 416. 
 Mahatmas, 380. 
 Mahdi, 403. 
 Mahilis, 18. 
 Maijam, 224. 
 Maine, Sir H., 192, 242. 
 Mainpuri, 200. 
 Maitland, Sir P., 191. 
 Malabar, 4, 18, 29, 30, 31, 35, 42, 43, 
 
 53, 76, 84, 87, 90, 91, 412. 
 Malabari, 331. 
 
 Malas, 232-234, 240, 248, 416. 
 Malayalam, 7, 36, 77, 196, 270, 302. 
 Malayals, 245. 
 Malayan, 139, 176. 
 Malay Peninsula, 45. 
 Maldive Islands, 42. 
 Maldivese, 139. 
 Male, 31, 32. 
 Malhar, 7. 
 Malleans, 214. 
 Malto, 7, 215, 302. 
 Malvalli, 224. 
 Manar, 51, 74, 85. 
 Manargudi, 160, 320. 
 Manbhum, 215, 226. 
 Mandalay, 365. 
 Mandapasalai, 199. 
 Mandeville, Sir J., 41. 
 Mandla, 216. 
 Manepy, 298. 
 Mangalavasanam, 301. 
 Mangalore, 90, 100, 120, 196, 299. 
 Mangar, 244, 247. 
 
 Mangate, 76, 84. 
 
 Mangs, 200, 248, 416. 
 
 Manichasism, 31. 
 
 Manigramam, 34, 197. 
 
 Manikavachacar, 36. 
 
 Manley, Rev. G. T., 326. 
 
 Mansilla, 50, 51, 54. 
 
 Mansis, 395. 
 
 Mantras, 26. 
 
 Manu, 188, 230. 
 
 Manuel, King, 44. 
 
 Maphrian, 89. 
 
 Mar Abraham, 77, 80, Si. 
 
 Mar Denha, 76. 
 
 Mar Dionysius, 88. 
 
 Mar Gabriel, 90. 
 
 Mar Gregor, 89. 
 
 Mar Jacob, 76, 77, 80. 
 
 Mar Jacobus, 33, 79, 
 
 Mar Joseph, 80. 
 
 Mar Prodh, 35. 
 
 Mar Simeon, 76. 
 
 Mar Simon, 90. 
 
 Mar Thomas, 84, 89. 
 
 Mar Xabro, 35. 
 
 Marang Buru, 244. 
 
 Marathi, 9, u, 72, 74, 136, 139, 196, 
 202. 
 
 Maratha Kunbis, 14. 
 
 Marava, 68, 419. 
 
 Marcellus 11., 59. 
 
 Marco Polo, 38, 41. 
 
 Mardin, 89. 
 
 Marpha, 216. 
 
 Marshall, 94. 
 
 Marshman, 124, 134-143, 168. 
 
 Marshman, Mrs., 137, 334. 
 
 Martin, Dr., 312, 359. 
 
 Martin, Mr. and Mrs., 225. 
 
 Martini, 123. 
 
 Martins, Dr., 346. 
 
 Martyn, Rev. H., 147, 2S9, 290. 
 
 Martyrdom, 27, 40, 41. 
 
 Maruvan Sapir Iso, 34, 35. 
 
 Marwar, 74. 
 
 Marwari, 302. 
 
 Mason, Dr., 207. 
 
 Massie, Dr., 174. 
 
 MasuUpatam, 73, 97, 1S4, 194, 320, 
 
 423- 
 Matanger, 84. 
 Matha, 388. 
 
 Mathers, Dr. R. C, 289. 
 Matthew of Medina, Abp., 45. 
 Matunga, 360. 
 Mauritius, 144. 
 Mawphlang, 217. 
 Maxwell, Dr., 351. 
 May, Rev. R., 145, 334. 
 Maya, 264-270. 
 Mayavaram, 197. 
 
462 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Mazagaon, 212. 
 
 Mazhabi Sikhs, 416. 
 
 Mazumdar, 375, 376. 
 
 McComby, 281. 
 
 McLaurin, Rev. J., 297, 306. 
 
 M'Leod, Sir D., 198, 209. 
 
 McMullen, Rev. R. M., 204. 
 
 McNeile, Rev. H., 324. 
 
 Meadows, Rev. R. R., 284. 
 
 Medak, 426. 
 
 Medical Missions, 220, 230, 300, 346- 
 
 355- 
 Meerut, 147, 157, 203. 
 Mehtars, 248, 416. 
 Melas, 23, 131, 282. 
 Melnattam, 160. 
 Mendynantes, 41. 
 Menentillus, 39. 
 Mennonites, 222, 226. 
 Meru, 43. 
 
 Mesopotamia, 30, 76, 77, 81. 
 Methodist Episcopal Church of 
 America, 211, 212, 229, 233, 234, 
 240, 299, 432. 
 Metz, Rev. — , 214. 
 Mhow, 213. 
 Middleton, Bp., 91, 156, 165, 275, 276, 
 
 278, 279. 
 Midnapur, 200. 
 Mihicham, 224. 
 Milapur, 32, 33, 36-38, 42, 43, 58, 65, 
 
 76, 84, 93, 114. 
 Milky Sea, 43. 
 Mill, Stuart, 391. 
 Miller, Dr., 183, 309, 319. 
 Millet, Major-General, 227. 
 Mimansa, 263. 
 Minachi, 26. 
 Minachiammal, 100. 
 Minorites, 41. 
 Miriam Zamani, 193. 
 Mirza, G. A., 401-405. 
 Mirzapur, 157, 207, 289. 
 Misdeus, 28. 
 
 Missionary calling, the, 135. 
 Missionary Conferences — 
 
 Madras, 1848, 170. 
 
 Madras, 1850, 170. 
 
 Calcutta, 1855, 214. 
 
 Benares, 1857, 214. 
 
 Ootacamund, 1 858, 214. 
 
 Lahore, 1862, 214. 
 
 Allahabad, 1872, 214, 313, 327, 428, 
 
 434- 
 Bangalore, 1879, 171, 214, 313, 
 Calcutta, 1882, 313. 
 Bombay, 1892, 229, 230, 434. 
 S. India, 1900, 171, 306, 378. 
 S. India, 1902, 171, 229, 230, 295, 
 
 306. 
 " Mission to Lepers," 358. 
 
 Missouri Missionary Society, 222. 
 
 Mitchell, Rev. Murray, 324. 
 
 Mobaron, 41. 
 
 Mogling, 197, 292. 
 
 Molucca Islands, 45, 141. 
 
 Monasteries at Goa, 72. 
 
 Monghyr, 153. 
 
 Mongolian Moghuls, 15. 
 
 Monro, J., 225, 354. 
 
 Mons, the, 245. 
 
 Monsoons, the, 3, $. 
 
 Montgomery, Sir R., 19J, 207, 209. 
 
 Moradabad, 211. 
 
 Moravians, 124, 131, 199, 346. 
 
 Morrison, Dr. J., 357. 
 
 Morvi, 392. 
 
 Moslem Institute, the, 401. 
 
 Mosul, 76. 
 
 Motihari, 225. 
 
 Mott, John, 326, 327. 
 
 Moulmein, 161. 
 
 Mozambique, 45. 
 
 Mozumdar, 184, 375, 376. 
 
 Mudnabati, 133, 134, 139. 
 
 Muhammadanism, 15, 20, 21, 48, 176, 
 
 253, 262, 366, 400-405. 
 Muhsos, 250. 
 Muir, Sir W., 209, 304. 
 Muirabad, 419. 
 Muir College, 326. 
 Mukerjeas, 184, 414. 
 Mukti, 239. 
 Mulki, 196. 
 
 Mlillbauer, 62, 63, 67-69, 73, 74, 92. 
 Mullens, Mrs., 328. 
 Midler, Geo., 324. 
 Miiller, Max, 384, 387, 391. 
 Mul Shankar, 392. 
 Multan, 194, 227, 235, 351. 
 Munda, 8, 13, 15, 18, 244, 246, 247, 
 
 298, 302. 
 Mundakajam, 214. 
 Mungeli, 222. 
 
 Murdoch, Dr. J., 239, 296, 297, 37S. 
 Murshidabad, 367. 
 Musahars, 12, 247. 
 Mussoorie, 212. 
 Musuwa, 362. 
 Muterte, 76. 
 Mutiny, the, 179, 180, 202-209, 241, 
 
 412. 
 Muttancherry, 84. 
 Muzaffarpur, 197, 212. 
 Muzafifarnagar, 361. 
 Myladi, 146, 154. 
 " My Path to Atheism," 382, 390. 
 Mysore, 68, 100, 160, 187, 212. 
 
 Nadiya, 269, 284. 
 
 Nagas, 245, 247, 298, 303. 
 
 Nagercoil, 154, 295, 299, 320. 
 
INDEX 
 
 463 
 
 Nagpur, 141, 183, 19s, 198, 212, 216, 
 
 275. 320, 349- 
 Naini Tal, 212. 
 Namentallah, 8g. 
 Nanakshahi, 22. 
 Nana Sahib, 204. 
 Nancowry, 124. 
 Naoroji, D., 184. 
 Narayana, 43. 
 Naiowal, 284. 
 Narsapur, 195, 224. 
 Nasik, 158, 352. 
 Nasirabad, 213, 348. 
 Nath, 184. 
 "National Church" movement, 427- 
 
 436. 
 •' National College," Madras, 396. 
 Native ministers, 427. 
 Nats, 244, 245. 
 Naturis, 402. 
 Nautch girls, 1 87, 331. 
 Nayak, 59, 99, lOO. 
 Nayar, 30. 
 Nayudupetta, 213. 
 Nazarites, 31. 
 Negapatam, 51, 58, 71, 74, 85, 92, 96, 
 
 109, 113, 160. 
 Nellore, 199, 219, 322. 
 Nelson, Judge, 191. 
 Nepal, 73, 75, 225, 247. 
 Nepean, Sir E., 144, 149. 
 " Nercha," 77. 
 Nesfield, 20. 
 
 Nestorians, 30, 40, 76, 77, Si, 89. 
 Netherlands Missionary Society, 281. 
 Neve, Drs., 351, 354. 
 Neve, Dr. A., 239. 
 "New Dispensation," the, 374. 
 Newell, 144, 149. 
 Newton, Dr. John, 200, 290, 352. 
 Neyoor, 154, 353, 354. 
 Nicea, Council of, 29. 
 Nicholas of Pistoja, 39. 
 Nicobar Islands, 124, 303. 
 Nicolas Notovitch, 403. 
 Nicolo de Conti, 43. 
 Nilgiri, 226. 
 Nilos Doxopatrios, 37. 
 Nimach, 213. 
 Nimbarak, 22. 
 Nimpani, 216. 
 Nineveh, 30. 
 Nirvana, 265, 267. 
 Nividita, Sister, 387. 
 Niyoga, 395. 
 
 Nobili, R. de, 58-71, 287. 
 Noble, Miss M., 387. 
 Noble, R., 184, 194. 
 North-West Provinces, 206, 240. 
 Northbrook, Lord, 180. 
 North German Missionary Society, 198. 
 
 Norton, 216, 224, 240. 
 
 Nott, 149. 
 
 Nottrott, Dr., 244, 250, 303, 362. 
 
 Nowgong, 199. 
 
 Noyes, Rev. — , 290. 
 
 Nuddea, 175. 
 
 Observantes, 71. 
 
 Ochsian dispute, the, 213. 
 
 Odoric, 41. 
 
 Oehler, Dr. T., 283. 
 
 Olcott, Col., 378-385, 390, 393- 
 
 Ole Gedde, loi. 
 
 Oman, Prof. Campbell, 396. 
 
 Ongole, 218, 320. 
 
 Ootacamund, 214, 226. 
 
 " Open Brethren," the, 224, 225. 
 
 Oraon, 7, 8, 18, 244, 246, 247, 295, 
 
 298, 302. 
 Oratorians, 72. 
 
 Orientalists, 132, 136, 176, 179. 
 Orissa, 12, 24, 73, 141, 153, 185, 217, 
 
 218. 
 Oriya, 9, n, 290, 295, 378. 
 Ormuz, 45, 58, 81. 
 Orphanages, 333, 410. 
 Oudh, 202, 204, 206, 211, 275. 
 Owen, Dr. Jos., 290. 
 Oxford Brotherhood, 325. 
 
 Pachamba, 215, 349. 
 
 Pahari, 7, 9, 215, 302. 
 
 Paine, 390. 
 
 Pakur, 212. 
 
 Palamattam, 78, 85, 86, 88. 
 
 Palamcottah, 119, 127, 319, 320, 343, 
 422, 423. 
 
 Palaungs, 245. 
 
 Palghat, 196. 
 
 Palmaner, 200. 
 
 Palmyra, 201. 
 
 Palpa, 302. 
 
 Panchamas, 18, 230-234, 260. 
 
 " Panch Howds," 222. 
 
 Panchpiria, 22. 
 
 Pandara Swamis, 65, 66. 
 
 Panruti, 226. 
 
 Pantjenus, 28, 29. 
 
 Pantheism, 23, 262-272. 
 
 Papal Decrees in India, 92. 
 
 Paramba, 86. 
 
 Paraparan, 270. 
 
 Paravas, 48, 49, 59, 61, 62, 63. 
 
 Parganas, 156. 
 
 Pariahs, 14, 64, 65, 67, 69, 108, III, 
 166, 167-172, 230, 240, 245, 247, 
 248, 259, 260, 261, 416, 417. 
 
 Parker, Bp., 212. 
 
 Paroth, 39. 
 
 Parsiism, see Zoroastrianism. 
 
 Parsons, Rev. G. H., 290. 
 
464 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Parua, 76. 
 
 Parur, 225. 
 
 Pashto, 302. 
 
 Pasumalai, 170, 199, 299, 320, 425. 
 
 Pasupat, 22, 
 
 Patan, 73. 
 
 Patashala, 183, 269, 296, 309. 
 
 Pathans, 15. 
 
 Patna, 73, 131, 153, 236, 350. 
 
 Patriarch, Nestorian, 76, 84, 88. 
 
 Patronage of idol-worship, 185-192. 
 
 Patzold, 136, 165. 
 
 Paulerspury, 131. 
 
 Pearson, Rev. H., 117, 147. 
 
 Pegg, Rev. — , 239. 
 
 Pegu, 58. 
 
 Pehlavi, 32, 33. 
 
 Pentecost, Dr., 324. 
 
 "Pentecostal Mission," 226. 
 
 Percival, Rev. — , 288. 
 
 Pereira, Abp., 45. 
 
 Periacoppam, 199. 
 
 Perron, du, 33. 
 
 Persians, 15, 32, 148, 176, 203. 
 
 Perumal, 34. 
 
 Peschito, 77. 
 
 Peshawar, 194, 211, 227, 320, 350, 
 
 351- 
 
 Pestonji, H., 427. 
 
 Peter of Siena, 39. 
 
 Peter Paul of Palma, 87. 
 
 Petit, Sir D., 360. 
 
 Peys, the, 246. 
 
 Pfander, 304. 
 
 Phantasiasts, 36. 
 
 " Philosophical Inquirer," 390. 
 
 Pietism, 103, 126, 164. 
 
 Pilgrim Taxes, the, 1 85-1 87, 1S9, 
 
 191. 
 Pilibhit, 212. 
 Pimenta, 76. 
 Pimentel, Abp., 88. 
 Pind Dadan Khan, 211. 
 " Pious Clauses," 150. 
 Pipli, 73. 
 Pisachas, 246. 
 
 Pithora-garh, 212, 362, 363. 
 Place, Mr., 186. 
 Plague, the, 236, 237, 
 Plassey, 202. 
 
 Pllitschau, Rev. 11., 102- 1 10. 
 Plymouth Brethren, 215, 224. 
 Podtu, 167. 
 
 Pohle, Rev. C, 122, 165, 166. 
 Poladpur, 361. 
 Polygamy, 255, 387. 
 Polzenhagen, 116, 124. 
 Pondicherry, 66, 68, 75, 90, 94, 96, 
 
 97, 98, 115- 
 Pongol festival, 187. 
 Poo, 199. 
 
 Poona, 161, 212, 222, 226, 227, 236, 
 
 4i3> 424- 
 Pope John xxii., 40. 
 Population, 6. 
 Porca, 76. 
 
 Poriar, 109, 123, 197. 
 Portenau, 41. 
 " Portuguese," 96, 105, 108, 112, 113, 
 
 129. 
 Portuguese Missions, decay of, 74. 
 Prabhu Din, 131. 
 Prabuddha Bharata, 399. 
 Prangui, 56, 59, 62, 63, 66. 
 Prathana Samaj, 397, 
 Pratt, Rev. Jos., 150. 
 Pratt, Hodgson, 207. 
 Premananda, 226. 
 Prendergast, 150. 
 Presbyterian Church of India, 435. 
 Presbyterian Missions, 161, 213, 435. 
 Press, the, 137, 299, 300, 301. 
 Pressier, Rev. C. F., 112, 123, 
 Prester John, 75. 
 Printing houses, 137, 298, 299. 
 Pritchett, Rev. E., 293. 
 "Privilege Tablets," 33, 79. 
 Prochnow, Dr., 197. 
 Proclamation of Queen Victoria, 208. 
 Prome, 199. 
 Protestant Lutheran Missionary Society, 
 
 197. 
 " Public Instruction Department," 180, 
 Pucotta, 87. 
 Puddukkottai, 68. 
 Pui, 361. 
 "Puja," 26, 132. 
 PuHcat, 96, 113, 114, 115. 
 Pulsnitz, 102. 
 Punjab, 2, 10, 12, 15, 19, 180, 193, 
 
 194, 206, 210, 211, 236, 274, 396, 
 
 411, 424, 432, 434. 
 Punjabi, 9. 
 
 " Punjab Itinerancy," the, 284. 
 Puranas, 309, 393, 398. 
 Puri, 25, 139, 185, 251. 
 Purulia, 225, 364. 
 Pusey, 194. 
 Pushkara, 24. 
 Puttencherry, 87. 
 
 Qadian, 401, 402. 
 Quadras, 52. 
 Quetta, 351. 
 Quien, le, 80. 
 Quilliam Abdullah, 401. 
 Quilon, 31, 35, 37, 38, 42, 58, 74, 76, 
 79, 85. 
 
 Rabban, Joseph, 34, 76. 
 Radhaswami Movement, 22, 399. 
 Radhavallabhi, 22. 
 
INDEX 
 
 465 
 
 Radstock, Lord, 324. 
 Rae Bareli, 211. 
 Raffles, Sir S., 145. 
 Ragas, 268. 
 Raghunathpur, 226. 
 Ragland, Rev. T. G., 284. 
 Ragunath Rao, 331, 396. 
 Raikes, Miss, 225. 
 Rainfall, 4, 5. 
 Raipur, 213, 362. 
 Rajagopa], 427. 
 Rajahmundry, 198. 
 Rajanaiken, in, 112, 121, 167. 
 Rajasthani, 9. 
 Rajkot, 195. 
 Rajmahal Hills, 7. 
 Rajputana, 5, 10, 12, 21S, 238. 
 Rajputs, 12, 13, 15. 
 Rama, 24, 249. 
 Ramabai, 227, 239, 330. 
 Ramanandi, 22. 
 Ramanuja, 249. 
 Ramayana, 24, 136. 
 Rameswaram, 23. 
 
 Ram Krishna Paramhansa, 3S7, 399. 
 Ram Madho, 184. 
 Ram Mohan Roy, 178, 367-369. 
 Ramnad, 48, 68, 100, 121. 
 Ramogyris, 37. 
 Rampur Bauleah, 213, 349. 
 Ramsay, Dr., 347, 
 Ramsay, H., 210. 
 Ramsay, Sir J., 356. 
 Ranaghat, 225, 354. 
 Ranchi, 198, 275. 
 Rangoon, 149, 161, 199, 221, 274. 
 Raniganj, 212. 
 Ranjit Singh, 193. 
 Rapolin, 83. 
 Rapur, 213. 
 Rasulam, 292. 
 Rationalism, 402. 
 Ratlam, 213. 
 Ratnam, Manchala, 184. 
 Ravi, R., 235. 
 Rawalpindi, 200, 213, 320. 
 Reade, Miss V. M., 226. 
 Rebecca, 338. 
 Reed, Miss Mary, 363. 
 Reeve, Mr., 226. 
 Reeve, Rev. W., 292. 
 Reformati, 71. 
 •' Regions Beyond," 225. 
 " Reis and Rayat," 384. 
 Relief works, 193. 
 Religious Tract Society, 295. 
 Remarriage of native Christians, 192. 
 " Review of Religions," 402, 404. 
 Revival of Hinduism, 389-400. 
 Revival of Hindu literature, 398, 
 399- 
 30 
 
 Revival of Muhammadanism, 400-405. 
 
 Rheede, H. A. van, 86. 
 
 Rhenius, Rev. C. T., 158, 159, 160, 
 
 168, 288, 422. 
 Ribbentrop, Dr., 197, 356. 
 Ribeiro, Abp., 88. 
 Rice, Rev. — , 144, 149, 161. 
 Rice, Rev. E. P., 304. 
 Rice Christians, 240. 
 Richards, Rev. W. F., 292. 
 Richardson, Dr., 384. 
 Richmond Hill, 424. 
 Richter's " Nordindische," etc., 261, 
 Ringeltaube, Rev. W. T., 146, 149, 
 
 154, 158. 
 Ripon, Lord, 309. 
 Rishis, 380, 381, 388, 395. 
 Risley, Sir H., 11, 20, 243, 244. 
 Rodriguez, Simon, 46, 54. 
 Rohilkhand, 193, 218. 
 Romapuri Sannyasis, 65. 
 Romo-Syrians, 85, 90. 
 Rottler, Dr. J. P., 124, 163, 165. 
 Rouse, Dr., 289, 306. 
 Roxburgh, 137. 
 Royapuram, 349. 
 Roz, 82, 83. 
 Russelkonda, 217. 
 Ryland, Dr. J., 142. 
 
 Saba, 29. 
 
 Sabceans, 29. 
 
 Sabathu, 200, 356. 
 
 Sachee, 41. 
 
 Sadharan Samaj, 373. 
 
 Sadija, 226. 
 
 Sadras, 96, 115. 
 
 Sagar, 23, 216. 
 
 Sagjuria, 224. 
 
 Saharanpur, 200, 359, 426. 
 
 Saiads, 21. 
 
 Saighar, 41. 
 
 Saimur, 41. 
 
 Saivites, 22, 26, 249. 
 
 Saktas, 22. 
 
 Sale, Mrs., 339. 
 
 Salem, 64, 155. 
 
 Salgado, R. F., 86. 
 
 Salsette, 39, 45, 57, 58, 71, 74. 
 
 Salur, 221. 
 
 Salurpetta, 213. 
 
 Salvation Army, 223, 449. 
 
 Salzmann, 109. 
 
 Samachar Durpan, 137. 
 
 Samari, 76. 
 
 Sambal, 186. 
 
 Samuel, J. A., 226. 
 
 Sandirapadi, 167. 
 
 Sandys, 204, 288. 
 
 Sankaracharya, 24. 
 
 Sankhya, 263, 268, 366, 392, 394. 
 
466 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sannyasi, 25, 60, 61, 63, 65, 68, 113, 
 
 146, 3^7, 392. 
 Sanskrit, 61, 135, 136, 139, 140, 253, 
 
 269. 
 Santipur, 200, 
 Santali, 8, 298, 303. 
 Santals, 18, 215, 217, 219, 244, 246, 
 
 247, 415- 
 Sanzian, 47, 55. 
 Sardars, 252. 
 
 Sargent, Bp., 274, 281, 431. 
 Sargodya, 235. 
 Saripat Purunia, 225. 
 Sarkara, 186. 
 Sartorius, 113, 125. 
 Sarvisvara, 270. 
 Sassanian, 33. 
 Satara, 200, 299. 
 Satguruwas, 251. 
 Satnami, 22, 251, 367. 
 Satpura Hills, 2, 17. 
 Satthianadhan, Prof. S., 427. 
 Satthianadhan, W. T., 427. 
 " Sattia Tudan," 301. 
 " Sattiavarthamani," 301, 384. 
 Sattirams, 242. 
 " Satyadipike," 301. 
 Satyaginus, 251. 
 Satyamangalam, 68, 120. 
 Sauras, 22. 
 Savage, 226. 
 
 Saxony, Missionary Conference of, 303. 
 Scandinavian Santal Mission, 415. 
 Schaaf, Prof., 90. 
 Schlegelmilch, Dr., 346. 
 Schleswig-Holstein Missionary Society, 
 
 221, 238. 
 Schmid, Rev. B., 422. 
 Schmidt, Rev. H., 293. 
 Schnorre, 159. 
 Schott, Rev. O., 283. 
 Schreyvogel, Rev. D., 165. 
 Schroter, 157. 
 Schultze, Rev. B. , no, iii, 113, 115, 
 
 116, 125, 166, 285, 289. 
 Schwartz, Rev. C. F., 99, 1 16-123, 126, 
 
 161, 163, 166, 185, 420, 421. 
 Schwedaung, 199. 
 Scotland, 174, 177. 
 Scotland, Established Church of, 161, 
 
 195, 213, 236, 252, 319, 336, 432. 
 Scotland, Free Church of, 195, 215, 
 
 216, 233, 322, 336, 413. 
 Scott, the brothers, 361. 
 Scott, Dr., 212, 327. 
 Scottish General Assembly, 174. 
 " Scottish Missionary Industrial Com- 
 pany," 413. 
 Scott Waring, 150. 
 Scudder, Dr. H., 347. 
 Scudder, Dr. J., 200, 347. 
 
 Sebastiao, King, 56. 
 
 Secunderabad, 212. 
 
 Seelye, Dr., 324. 
 
 Sehore, 358. 
 
 Seikokwei, 435. 
 
 Seitoon, 41. 
 
 Seitta Panaiche, 72, 
 
 Selincourt, Miss A. de, 327. 
 
 Sell, Canon, 304. 
 
 Seminaries, Theological, 422, 423, 424, 
 
 425. 
 Senard, 20. 
 
 Sequeira, P. de, 33, 79. 
 Serampore, 131, 134, 144, 149. 
 Serampore College, 141, 142, 143. 
 Serfoji, 99, 120, 121, 123. 
 Series, Captain, 387. 
 Seringapatam, 100, 119. 
 Shaftesbury, Lord, 296. 
 Shah Jehan, 346. 
 Shahjahanpur, 21 1, 
 Shamanism, 23. 
 Shammas, 78. 
 Shan, 303. 
 Shanans, 146, 158, 194, 201, 232, 248, 
 
 416, 422, 423. 
 Shangpung, 217. 
 Shastras, 387. 
 Shaul, 45, 57, 71. 
 Shekhs, 21. 
 Sheldon, Dr. C, 347. 
 Sheila, 217. 
 
 Sherring, Rev. M. A., 303. 
 Sheshadri Narayan, 427. 
 Shidam Banwar, 364. 
 Shillidys, Rev. — , 291. 
 Shillong, 217. 
 Shirt, Rev. — , 291. 
 Sholapur, 200. 
 Shoolbred, Dr., 348. 
 Sialkot, 195, 205, 213, 236, 352. 
 Sibsagar, 199. 
 Sigra, 193, 198, 410. 
 Sikandra, 193, 198, 410, 41 1, 412. 
 Sikhism, 366. 
 Sikhs, 22, 193, 202. 
 Sikkim, 3. 
 Sil, 398. 
 
 Simeon, Rev. Chas. , 147, 148. 
 Simeon, Metropolitan, 35. 
 Simeon, Patriarch, 77. 
 Simla, 194, 197. 
 Sind, 2, 212. 
 Sindhi, 9, 11, 291, 302. 
 Singbonga, 244, 250. 
 Singlatz, 41. 
 Singrowli, 217. 
 Sirkar, 184. 
 Sirur, 200. 
 
 Sisterhood of All Saints, 222. 
 Sisterhood of St. Mary's, 222, 
 
INDEX 
 
 467 
 
 Sitapur, 211. 
 
 Siva, 24, 25, 186, 246, 249, 392. 
 Sivaganga, 100. 
 Sivaji, 99. 
 Sivanaraini, 22. 
 Sivanath Shastri, Dr. , 373- 
 Skinner, Rev. J., 291. 
 Skrefsrud, 215, 303. 
 Slater, Rev. T. E., 304. 
 Slavery, 150, 255. 
 Smartas, 22. 
 Smith, Dr. T., 338. 
 Snow, Hamid, 401. 
 Society for Defence of Islam, 405. 
 Society of Friends, 213. 
 Society for Promoting Christian Know- 
 ledge, 125, 146, 156, 159, 164, 
 165, 194, 297, 299- . ^ ^ 
 
 Society for the Propagation ot the 
 Gospel, 156, 158, 159, 164, 165, 
 169, 194. 201, 204, 215, 222, 223, 
 229, 234, 276, 280, 288. 
 Sohagpur, 213. 
 Solapuram, 224. 
 " Soma " sacrifice, 374. 
 Soiisa, R. de, 79. 
 S. India Railway Mission, 226. 
 Sparrow, Mr., 226. 
 Spencer, Bp., 227. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 391. 
 Srinagar, 351, 354, 403- 
 Srirangam, 24, 26. 
 Start, 197. 
 Steele, Dr., 347. 
 Sterapur, 411. 
 Sternberg, 251. 
 Stewart, Lieutenant, 157. 
 Stipend, missionary's, 105. 
 Storries, 227. 
 Storrow, Rev. E., 336. 
 Student Volunteer Movement, 326. 
 Subrahmanya, 25. 
 
 Sudras, 18, 21, 67, 108, in, 166, 167, 
 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 230, 232, 
 234, 259, 260, 388, 415, 420 
 Sulaiman Mountains, 12, 211. 
 Sulaka, J., 77> 80. 
 Suleiman, 36. 
 Sulga, 225. 
 Sullivan, 121. 
 
 Sunday School Lessons and Helps, 301, 
 Sunday School Union, The India, 327, 
 
 328. 
 Sunday-school work, 327, 328, 329. 
 Sundarbans, 23, 154, 156, 201. 
 Supera, 39, 40. 
 
 Surat, 75, 97, 145. 15s. 195. 222. 
 Suri, 153. 
 Susruta, 176. 
 Sutcliff, 142. 
 Suttee, 188, 330, 368, 387. 
 
 Sutton, Rev. — , 290. 
 
 Swadeshi Movement, 397. 
 
 Swain, Dr. Clara, 350. 
 
 Swedish Protestant National Society, 
 
 213, 217, 
 Syed, Sir Ahmed Khan, 401, 402. 
 Syrian Church, 30, 31, 35, 38, SS, 75, 
 
 91, 147, 158. 
 
 Tagore, Babu Cumar, 338. 
 Tagore, 369, 370. 
 Taiping Rebellion, 252. 
 Takpo, 73. 
 Takings, 245. 
 Taljhari, 215. 
 Talkad, 224. 
 Tamalo, 46. 
 
 Tamil Coolie Mission, 278. 
 Tamil Country, 38, 64, 98, loi, 109, 
 117, 149, 160, 168, 172, 186, 218, 
 224, 230. 
 Tamil, 7, 19, 47> 48, 61, 245, 301. 
 Tanjore, 99, loi, in, 112, 117-121, 
 123, 125, 165, 166, 169, 197, 320. 
 Tank, 211, 367. 
 Tanore, 45. 
 
 Tantras, 384, 393, 397- 
 Taprobane, 31. 
 Tarakeshwar, 139. 
 Taramkambadi, loi. 
 Tarasapali, 34, 35. 
 Tarn Taran, 284, 359. 
 Tatipaka, 224. 
 Tattaraceri, 86. 
 Tatwa Bodha Swami, 65. 
 Tatwabodhini Sabha, 369. 
 Tavoy, 161, 221 
 Taylor, Miss A., 225. 
 Taylor, Gen. R., 194, 209. 
 Taylor, Bp. W., 212. 
 
 Teignmouth, Lord, 150. 
 
 Tekkenkur, 76. 
 
 Tellicherry, 196. 
 
 Telugu, 7, 61, 73, 173. 194, I98> 218, 
 219, 238, 245, 301. 
 
 Temple, Sir R., 210. 
 
 Terrell, Charles D., 359. 
 
 Thags, 189. 
 
 Thakurdas, 414. 
 
 Thana, 39, 41, 349- 
 
 Theatines, 72, 75. 
 
 Theodore, 36. 
 
 Theodosius, 36. 
 
 Theophilus, Bp., 29, 30. 
 
 " Theosophical Society," 381-385. 
 
 Theosophy, 323, 379-383- 
 
 Theseus de Montecceli, 80. 
 
 " The Thinker," 390. 
 
 Thoburn, Bp., 212. 
 
 Thoburn, Miss I., 212, 238. 
 
 Thomas, Archdeacon, 84, 88. 
 
468 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Thomas of Tolentino, 39. 
 
 Thomas, Bp. of Edessa, 30. 
 
 Thomas, Khan, 30, 31. 
 
 Thomas, Dr. J., 133, 347. 
 
 Thomas Christians, 41. 
 
 Thomas shrines, 32, 36, 39, 42. 
 
 Thomason, Jas., 183. 
 
 Thomason, Rev. T., 147, 148. 
 
 Thompson, Rev. C. S., 217. 
 
 Thompson, Dr. A., 283, 428. 
 
 Thompson, Rev. — , 238. 
 
 Thompson, Rev. E. W., 306. 
 
 Thomson, Dr., 348. 
 
 Thread, sacred, 61, 64, 69. 
 
 Thwaites, Rev. E. N., 324. 
 
 Tibet, 3, 73, 75, 199, 225. 
 
 Tibetan Pioneer Mission, 225. 
 
 Tiliali, 109. 
 
 Timm, Rev, — , 238. 
 
 Tindivanam, 200. 
 
 Tinnevelly, 18, loi, 119, 158, 194, 
 
 197, 201, 218, 219, 220, 224, 231, 
 
 234, 274, 320, 380, 415, 417, 419, 
 
 421, 423, 431- 
 Tipu Sahib, 16, 90, 91, 93, 100, 120. 
 Tirumal Naick, 99. 
 Tirumangalam, 199. 
 Tirupati, 186, 213. 
 Tirupatur, 24. 
 
 Tisdall, Rev. St. Clair, 304. 
 Tiyans, 416. 
 Toda, 7, 215, 302. 
 Todhgarh, 213. 
 Tolfrey, 291. 
 Tols, 175, 269. 
 Toogood, Miss, 338. 
 Totemism, 18, 245. 
 Toungoo, 199. 
 Tournon, 69, 70. 
 Tracey, Mrs., 339. 
 Tractarian Movement, 273. 
 Tract Societies, 295. 
 Training of Teachers and Pastors, 321, 
 
 340, 421-425. 
 Tranquebar, 96, loi, 103, iii, 117, 
 
 123, 124, 145, 159, 162-165, 197- 
 Transmigration of souls, 267. 
 Travancore, 4, 35, 36, 37, 45, 50, 51, 
 
 58. 75. 76, 82, 90, 91, 146, 155, 
 
 158, 194. 219, 226, 231, 275. 
 Trevelyan, Sir C, 179. 
 Trichinopoly, 23, 24, 68, 99, 100, loi, 
 
 117, IIS, 119, 
 165, 166, 169, 
 
 Trichur, 295. 
 
 Trincomali, loi. 
 
 Trivandrum, 37, 326. 
 
 Trumpp, Dr. E., 302, 
 
 Tucker, 159. 
 
 Tucker, " Major," 22 
 
 Tulsi, 99, 118, 120. 
 
 70, 320. 
 
 125, 
 
 Tuhi, 7, 196, 302. 
 
 Tumkur, 160. 
 
 Tundi, 215, 349. 
 
 Tunkers, 222. 
 
 Tuticorin, 50, 58, 74, 85, 96. 
 
 Twining, 150. 
 
 Tychsen, 33. 
 
 Udaipur, 213, 348, 352. 
 
 Udaipuri, 302. 
 
 Udapi, 196. 
 
 Udayamperur, 82. 
 
 Udny, 133, 146. 
 
 Uffmann, Rev. H., 364. 
 
 Ujjain, 213. 
 
 Ujjaini, 302. 
 
 Ulama, 402. 
 
 Ullmann, 200, 360. 
 
 Unao, 211. 
 
 " Unattached " missions, 225-22S. 
 
 Underbill, Rev. E. B,, 283. 
 
 Undopherres, 28. 
 
 " Unitarian Church," 368. 
 
 United Provinces, 5, 10, 15, 180. 
 
 United S. Indian Church, 435. 
 
 United Syrians, 85. 
 
 Universities, Indian, 180, 31 1. 
 
 " Unknown Life of Christ," the, 403. 
 
 Upadhi, 266, 267. 
 
 Upanishads, 263, 368, 393, 399. 
 
 Urdu, 16, 176, 289, 295, 401. 
 
 Ureiur, 68. 
 
 Urfah, 28. 
 
 Urmia, 77. 
 
 Vaipikota, 80, 83, 87. 
 
 Vaishnavites, 22, 26, 44, 68. 
 
 Vaishya, 18, 21, 230. 
 
 Vakadu, 213. 
 
 Valentine, Dr. C, 348, 353. 
 
 Vallabhacharia, 22. 
 
 Vandalism in Syrian Church, 82, 
 
 Vaniyambadi, 222. 
 
 Vasconcelles, de, Abp., 88. 
 
 Vasconcelles, de, Bp., 88. 
 
 Vaughan, J., 303. 
 
 Vedanta, 24, 263, 264, 366, 386, 392, 
 
 399. 
 Vedantist Society, 368. 
 Vedas, 61, 67, 263, 287, 368, 369, 393, 
 
 394. 395. 396, 399- 
 Vellore, 99, 115, 150, 200, 320, 435. 
 Venkaji, 99. 
 Venkatagiri, 213. 
 
 Venn, Rev. H., 51, 160, 277,429-433. 
 Vepery, 114, 169. 
 Verapoli, 86, 87, 91, 94. 
 Vernacular, 176, 280-285, 296. 
 Victoria, Queen and Empress, 220, 
 
 351- 
 Vidyasagar, 331. 
 
INDEX 
 
 469 
 
 Village Missions, 2S4, 345. 
 Vincenz, 79. 
 Virajanda, 393. 
 Vira Raghava, 34. 
 Vishnu, 24, 249, 250, 398. 
 Vivekananda, Swami, 323, 386-3S9. 
 Vizagapatam, 145, 149, 155, 219. 
 " Vrittanta Patrike," 301. 
 
 Wadakenkur, 76. 
 
 Wadal, 200. 
 
 Wade, Rev. — , 291. 
 
 Walajabad, 349. 
 
 Waldegrave, 227. 
 
 Walther, Rev. T., 112, 123, 270, 285. 
 
 Waltroth, Dr., 294. 
 
 Wanamaker, 327. 
 
 Wanier, 34, 35. 
 
 Ward, Dr. N., 347. 
 
 Ward, Rev. W., I34-I43> 3°3- 
 
 Wardha, 349. 
 
 Wariur, 68. 
 
 Warneck, Prof., 63, 71, 261. 
 
 Was, the, 245. 
 
 Wazirabad, 195, 213, 235. 
 
 Weigle, Rev. G. H., 292. 
 
 Weinbrennerians, 225, 229. 
 
 Weitbrecht, Rev. J. J., 157. 
 
 Weitbrecht, Dr. H. U., 289, 294, 306. 
 
 Welland, Rev. J., 424. 
 
 Wellesley, Marquess of, 135, 185. 
 
 Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, 216. 
 
 Wendt, Rev, C, 109, 
 
 Wenger, Dr. J., 140, 289. 
 
 Wesenberg, 103. 
 
 Wesley Guild, 328. 
 
 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, 
 
 212, 424, 426. 
 West, Dr., 33. 
 Westcott, Bp., 223. 
 Westcott, Rev. A., 126, 167. 
 •'Western Indian Native Christian 
 
 Alliance," 434. 
 Wheeler, Col., 205. 
 Wheeler, Miss, 224. 
 White of Karnal, 401. 
 Wiedebrock, Rev. J. C, 123. 
 
 Wigram, Rev. F. E., 324. 
 
 Wilajat, Ali, 204. 
 
 Wilberforce, Bp., 274. 
 
 Wilberforce, Wm., 149, 150, 273. 
 
 Wilder, R., 327, 
 
 William of Prato, 43. 
 
 Williamson, Dr., 302, 347. 
 
 Wilson, Bp., 91, 167, 169, 277, 279,339. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. I., 335. 
 
 Wilson, Dr. J., 19, 161, 168, 183, 195, 
 
 269, 301, 304. 
 Wilson, Mrs., 334. 
 Winter, Mrs., 350. 
 Women doctors, 350. 
 Women's Auxiliaries, 339, 340. 
 Women's work for vi^omen, 214, 230, 
 
 329-346. 
 Wood, Sir C, 180, 307. 
 Wood's Law, 182. 
 Worm, Rev. P. Jacob, 102. 
 Wright Innes, 225. 
 Wright, Rev. — , 342. 
 Wylie, Col., 358. 
 
 Xavier, Francisco, 45-55. 
 Xavier, Hieronimo, 74. 
 
 Ya Htai, 245. 
 
 Ya Htawa, 245. 
 
 Yama, 267. 
 
 Yates, Rev. W., 140, 289. 
 
 Yoga, 263. 
 
 Yogi, 25, 64. 
 
 Young Men's Christian Association, 
 
 326, 327. 
 Young Women's Christian Association, 
 
 326, 327. 
 
 "Zenana Bible and Medical Mission," 
 
 340, 342, 350. 
 Zenanas, 329, 331, 338, 344, 350- 
 Ziegenbalg, Rev. B., 102-110, 1 14, 163, 
 
 285, 2S8. 
 Ziemann, Rev. G. W., 197, 283. 
 Zion Church (Danish), 162. 
 Zook, Mr., 225. 
 Zoroastrianism, 73, 286, 304. 
 
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 Church, Central India. With Eight Full-page Illustrations. 
 
 Hinduism and Christianity. By John Robson, D.D, Author of 
 "The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete," etc. Third Edition. 
 
BOOKS ON INDIA 
 
 The Wrongs of Indian Womanhood. By Mrs. Marcus B. 
 Fuller, Bombay. With an Introduction by Ramabai, 
 
 India's Problem, Krishna or Christ. By John P. Jones, D.D., 
 of Southern India, A.B.C.F.M. Illustrated. Cloth. 
 
 The Cobra's Den, and other Stories of Missionary Work among 
 the Telugus of India. By Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, Author of 
 " In the Tiger Jungle." Fully Illustrated. 
 
 Daughters of Darkness ; or. From Girlhood to Womanhood in 
 India. By Beatrice M. Harband, Author of "The Pen of 
 Brahma." 
 
 In the Tiger Jungle, and other Stories of Missionary Work 
 among the Telugus of India. By Rev. Jacob Chamberlain, 
 M.A., D.D. With Portrait and Seven Illustrations. 
 
 The High-Caste Hindu Woman. A Powerful Presentation of 
 the Infelicities of Child Marriages and Enforced Widowhood. 
 By Pandita Ramabai. Revised. Cloth. 
 
 The Little Green God. By Mrs. Caroline Atwater Mason. 
 Cloth. 
 
 Among the Burmans. By H. P. Cochrane. With numerous 
 beautiful Illustrations. Cloth, 
 
 SOO Thah. A Tale of the Making of the Karen Nation. By 
 Olonzo Bunker, D.D., Thirty Years a Missionary in Burmah. 
 With an Introduction by Henry C. Mabie, D.D. Illustrated. 
 
 Missions and Modern History. A Study of the Missionary 
 Aspect of some Great Movements of the Nineteenth Century. 
 By Robert E. Speer. Two Vols. 8vo. 
 
 A Life for God in India. Memorials of Mrs. Jennie Fuller, of 
 Akola and Bombay, Author of " The Wrongs of Indian Woman- 
 hood." By Helen S. Dyer, Author of " Pandita Ramabai, the 
 Story of her Life." With Portrait. Cloth. 
 
 The Child of the Ganges. A Tale of the Judson Mission. By 
 Rev. Prof. R. N. Barrett. Illustrated. Cloth. 
 
 Outline of a History of Protestant Missions from the 
 Reformation to the Present Time. A Contribution to 
 Modern Church History. By G. Warneck, D.D, Translated 
 from the Eighth Edition by arrangement with the Author, and 
 Revised by George Robson, D.D. With Portrait and Maps. 
 
 A History of Missions in India. By Julius Richter, D.D. 
 Translated by Sydney H. Moore, Master in the School for Sons 
 of Missionaries, Blackheath, With Map. 
 
Date Due 
 
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