Missionaries’ Strategy in the Choice of Tamil prose Style

The coming of the Europeans to Tamil Nadu has brought many remarkable changes in the social, cultural and linguistic domains. The Europeans came for trade and later they settled with strong political power and administration. Following the earlier settlers, European missionaries wanted to extend their religious propagation in this new exotic land. It is said that in 6th May 1542 Saint Francis Xavier came to Goa just after two years of canonical formation of the Society of Jesus. Even in the first century itself Christian religion was known to our land due to the coming of Saint Thomas, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. In 522 B.C. Cosmas, a merchant from Alexandria has mentioned in his “Universal Christian Topography” that there were few Christians in India and most of them were in Kerala. However it was only after 1660s the activities of the missionaries were very vibrant.

The Europeans at the time of the early merchandise activities did not feel very much the need for learning the local language. When they gained the ruling power, they felt the need for the local language namely Tamil for better communication in their administrative activities. Therefore they employed educated locals who acquired adequate knowledge in English. The need for the European administrators to learn Tamil was not very much compelling since they could manage their administrative needs with the educated locals who served as interpreters and translators.

However few European scholars attracted by the culture of the new society learned Tamil language with interest and thereby few of them put their experiences and findings into writings for wider circulation among Europeans. When the missionaries came for religious propagation, the need for closer interaction with the locals was extremely important and this amount of social affinity was not needed to any other Europeans of any other sector. Therefore the missionaries were left with no choice than to learn Tamil language. At the same time, the missionaries also ventured to educate the locals through formal schooling besides their attempt to improve their hygiene, medical facilities, etc close to the western standards of those periods.

The diglossic situation of Tamil language where there are two totally different varieties of language each with exclusive domains of use confused the missionaries in learning Tamil. Knowledge of the high variety provides minimum comprehension skill for the missionaries to understand and interact in the low variety of the language and vice versa. The High variety is used in formal situations such as platform speeches, letter writings, literary works, etc. The low variety is used in all informal situations and is found in day to day conversations of the locals especially by the uneducated Tamils in all their linguistic activities. It must be noted that the low variety is not considered as prestigious one and further literary works are found only in the poetic style of the High variety Tamil. Literacy in Tamil is considered as mastery in high variety and formal learning of low variety is discouraged by the natives.

The most viable target groups of the missionaries for their religious conversion were found to be the uneducated working class in particular the discarded downtrodden poor Harijans and the isolated fisherman community of the complex caste structured Tamil society. These groups use the low variety of the Tamil language with their stigmatized dialect markers in all

their linguistic activities. Religious conversion is the sole and main objective for the missionaries. This goal can be achieved only by winning the locals’ confidence. Without conversant in the local dialect, it is not at all possible to penetrate well into the culture and society of the target group. Therefore the missionaries were committed to learn the local variety as their foremost duty. It is found that some schools in Mission compound taught Tamil language for those priests who were charted for the propagation of Christianity among the Tamils (Mailai Seeni. Venakatasami, 2006:13)

The missionaries had numerous Christian materials already written in their own mother tongues. As a first step of their propagation activity they wanted pamphlets, prayer books, etc. in Tamil. To read the religious materials the target group need to posses reading skill. Therefore the missionaries started schools for the children as well as for the viable elders. Though there was lot of hesitations among the elders particularly among women folk to undergo formal schooling, the missionaries were successful slowly in their effort to teach the locals their mother tongue as well as English. Education at that time was restricted to upper class and that too for boys only. Thus religious propagation was done along schooling.

One should note that the prose style of Tamil is referred in Tolkappam as ‘urai’. The foremost function of urai is to explain the meaning of the poem. There is also another kind of urai which is written independent of poetry called as ‘paavinRelunta kiLavi’. Tolkappiar mentions other two types of prose styles based on the content of the material such as those which contain fantasy as ‘poyimmoli’ and those which create laughter as ‘nakaymoli’. It must be noted that Tolkappiar mentions the latter two with the postposition ‘moli’. This type of classification makes one to assume that the first two belong to formal style of prose variety and the latter two, the informal style of the prose

variety of the diglossic Tamil. In Sangam period, prose style in Tamil was never used for any independent literary activity. Silappathikaaram, one of the five great epics of Tamil of the 3rd century uses High variety prose style interspersed with its poetic writings. The commentaries written around 9th century uses prose style.

The target group for their religious conversion was mostly uneducated downtrodden working class. Contact with this local group has been slowly established with local language. The target group was equipped with the reading skill in Tamil. Now providing education for the early converts to the level of reading High variety Tamil literature was considered as a Herculean task. Further most of the missionaries themselves have not acquired mastery over the literary variety of the diglossic Tamil. Further the missionaries were exposed in their home land to prose writing which is similar to their spoken variety. They had experienced prose style in many other non literary activities. This experience motivated the missionaries for a prose style in Tamil closer to the spoken variety. Therefore the missionaries preferred a prose style similar to that of the locals’ speech variety (of course without any dialect markers) since it is known to the locals and it is comprehensible for the missionaries too. It must be noted that from Sangam period Buddhism, Jainism, etc. tried to propagate their religions by writing epics, minor literatures, etc. in High variety poetic style as per the grammatical norms.

The arrival of the printing press in Goa in 6th Sept. 1556 brought a remarkable change in the prose style of Tamil Language. Since handwritten copies have restricted and closed circulation, the missionaries were longing for a printing press to publish religious materials for wider reach. The ‘Doctrina Chritam’ written by Francis Xavier was translated into Tamil by Father Henriques with the help of a local Christian priest named Manuel De

Sao Paul and was published in 20th October 1578 in Kollam. This first prose
book has 16 pages and it paved way for a new form of prose style based on the Spoken variety of Tamil as against the existing one modeled on poetic variety of Tamil. It is evident that there are lots of Sanskrit words in the religious glossary of Tamil language. The Tamil Bhakthi poems used least number of Sanskrit forms though there is free Sanskrit interference in spoken domain. The missionaries did not hesitate to borrow Sanskrit forms in their religious writings. Thus the prose style adopted by the missionaries was closer to spoken variety with free use of Sanskrit forms. There were also many non native words such as /kurusu/ “cross”; /kiraasai/ “Grace”, etc referring to Christian doctrines for which the foreign priests could not find Tamil equivalence.

The missionaries introduced in Tamil prose style all punctuation marks as found in English prose writing. The morphemic short and long differences among vowels need to be distinguished for proper understanding of the meaning of the words in prose style. The missionaries made diacritic changes for the above distinction.

Text books for formal schooling were printed in standardized High variety and it is not any way modeled on the archaic Tamil prose style. . However Tamil literatures were brought to publication from palm leaves and they had their prose style in the High variety of the Tamil with less non native influence. The Hindu religious mutts printed Hindu religious materials in prose style comprehensible to the target group to prevent their conversion to Christianity. Religious journals were started by all religious sectors to keep their believers in close contact and to reassure their faith. The prose style used in those magazines reinforced spoken variety of the missionaries. The increase in the domains of the use of this spoken variety stabilized it for a standard written style which is not closer to the old archaic poetic style promoted from the literature such as Silappatikaaram. Thus the remarkable contribution of the missionaries in the choice of prose style for Tamil language paved way for a totally different prose form for years to come and this became the language style for short story writings, novels, etc. to be named as prose genre in Tamil literature.
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Muthu Publisher, Villupuram, 1993.

“ “ “ The strategies of the Missionaries in learning, teaching
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Pondicherry University.

Mohanavelu, C.S. German Tamilology
Saaiva Siddhandha Publications, Chennai, 1993.

Tamilnadan(ed.), First printed book in Tamil Language (Tamil),
Salem District writers Association, Salem,1995.

Venkatasami, Seeni. Christians and Tamil (Tamil)
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