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HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA : M. M. NINAN and they can mean something only when these sound symbols are assigned meaning. This is essentially culture specific. How much more when we are actually communicating through all the five senses. All such communications are culture specific. This is the reason why one of the first attempts of the mission is to translate the Bible into the language of the culture they enter in. To communicate in all its fulness we need to translate the message of salvation into the symbols of the culture. When we come to Indian culture, most of the underlying religious cultural symbols in the Upanishads (Please note that it is not Vedic symbols of Aryans) are Christian (see my book on Emergence of Hinduism from Christianity). Behind the sacred rituals and sounds we could still see the early message which were embeded by St. Thomas. I have extensively treated these in my studies on Hinduism. Today, most of these symbols are taken over and distorted to some extent through syncretism with local religions and hero worship and New Age Philosophies. Reclaiming it and getting back into the real message of the Personality of Jesus the Lord and Savior is what was intended by some adventurous missionaries. Evidently there is a risk involved in the taking back that it can easily be misunderstood and the strategies can even misfire. As long as we keep the centrality of the Person of Jesus is maintained we should be OK. It is with this intension some brave missionaries both from the Catholic and Potestant Missions entered into the experiment of starting the Christavashrams. This was relevant and did make an impact especially during the Freedom Struggle period of India to the Christians of India. Beginners in the field were those who studied the various Indian languages and translated the Bible and wrote Evangelical books. Some of the pioneers in this field were mentioned earlier. The pioneer in this area of Christian Ashram was the Italian Jesuit Roberto de Nobili. Roberto de Nobili 254
HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN INDIA : M. M. NINAN Om Nama Christaya. Christya saranam Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656), Being a Roman Catholic Missionary of the order of the Jesuits Roberto de Nobili arrived in Goa on May 20, 1605. It is probable that he met here Fr Thomas Stephens, SJ, who had arrived in Goa in 1579, and was probably in the process of composing his Khristapurana which was an attempt to portray the whole biblical story from creation to Christ in the Puranic literary style. After a short stay in Cochin in Kerala, he took up residence in Madurai in Tamil Nadu in November 1606. He soon called himself a "teacher of wisdom", and began to dress like a Sannyasin. Claiming noble parentage he approached high-caste people, and eagerly engaged in dialogue with Hindu scholars about the truths of Christianity. De Nobili mastered Sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil languages and literature, with the help of his teacher, Shivadharma and composed Catechisms, apologetic works and philosophic discourses in Tamil, and contributed greatly to the development of modern Tamil prose writing. As he expounded the Christian doctrine in Tamil he coined several new words (which were not used by Christians) to communicate his message. For example he used the word "kovil" for a place of worship, "arul" and "prasadam" for grace, "guru" ) for priest or teacher, "Vedam" for the Bible, "poosai" for Mass, etc. He adopted also local Indian customs, such as shaving one's head and keeping only a tiny tuft. He wore a , white dhoti and wooden sandals, to don the look of a sanyasin. His converts retained the 'Shendi' or tuft of hair which marked the caste Hindu, and they wore a sacred cord of three strings across the chest. He interpreted the three-stringed thread as representing the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.representing trinity and they bore an oval caste mark on their brow, the paste composing or being made of the ashes of sandalwood instead of the ashes of cow dung. 255
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PREFACE This book is the result of
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Kolla Varsham (Malayalam Era) HISTO
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1321 Friar Odoric of Pordenone HIST
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"Third Wave of Migration". HISTORY
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Indian Christianity

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