SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2024
Sushila Sawant Mendes
Marathi and Konkani literature produced in India by the European missionaries during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an integral part of their proselytising activities. Unfortunately most of this literature is on its way to complete extinction. Only a rare copy or two of the works of these missionaries are today found scattered widely over different libraries in India or Europe, either in the manuscript form or in editions printed in the seventeenth century.
A K Priolkar, the man accused of writing about the famous or infamous Inquisition is the same person who has by far done the most scholarly research work about the contribution of the Christian Jesuit priests in the propagation of the local languages. Even though he admits that the intention was to reach the Catholic doctrine to the converts, this led to the enrichment of both the languages. Priolkar however considered Marathi as a literary language and Konkani as the spoken language. In fact, he refers to it as the, ‘so called Konkani language”. Priolkar refers to this language as Lingua Brahmana, Bramana Canarin, Bramana Vulgar or Lingua de terra corrente.
Most of us are familiar with the name of Fr Stephen Thomas, a Jesuit priest who wrote the Christ Purana in 1616. The Konkani Kendra in Porvorim run by the Jesuits is named after him. He was an Englishman born in 1549. This work was written in response to the fact that it was hard for the converts to forget the stories of their old Puranas which they had been later forbidden to read. So this was an attempt to compose a Purana with a Christian content on the lines of the old Puranas to serve as a substitute. This discourse of the coming of Christ to the world has an Introduction, the poet’s invocation, praise of the Marathi language in which the poet proposes to write and lastly what led him to write this Purana.
Fr Stephens other magnum opus in Konkani, is Doutrina Christam published posthumously in 1622. This appears to be the translation of the work on Portuguese on the same subject by Fr Marcos Jorge. The intention was possibly to enable its use by converts from lower castes who had little acquaintance with the more literary language of that period, considered to be Marathi. As there was considerable diversity between the forms of dialect spoken by the different castes and regions of Goa, he selected that spoken by the Brahmans of Salcette as the standard one.
Fr Stephen also wrote a grammar of the dialect spoken in Goa published as; Arte da Lingoa Canarin. It was published in 1640 in Rachol by Fr Diogo Ribeiro. A second edition was published by Cunha Rivara. Fr Stephen died in 1619 after spending forty years of his life in the company of Brahmin converts to Christianity.
Besides Fr Stephen, there were other foreign Jesuit priests of European parentage who came to India and made tremendous efforts to learn the local languages as well as the written script and finally wrote their discourses in both Marathi and Konkani. Their missionary zeal, must have provided the motivation for the learning of these foreign languages. Fr. Diogo Ribeiro, S.J. (1560-1633) wrote solely in the spoken language and published his work entitled ‘A Statement of the Christian Doctrine in 1632. He was also the author of Vocabuario da Lingua Canarin.
Another Jesuit priest Fr Etienne de la Croix, who succeeded Fr Stephen as rector of the Jesuit College at Rachol, had mastered both Konkani and the Marathi language. Fr Alex Rhodes refers to Fr Croix in the following terms, “He speaks the local languages better than the natives themselves and has published many books in either of these languages which are highly praised by all”. The subject matter of his major work is the life of St Peter. It is described as written in verse in, Lingua bramana Marasta. In his writing the poet, reviles Vishnu, the Hindu God. This could be expected from the mind-set of a Catholic priest of that period.
Fr Antonio da Saldanha S J wrote both in Marathi and in Konkani. He wrote on the life of St Anthony of Padua in 1665. His discourse is on, “Confession of a sinner”. He has been described as the next representative of the school to which Stephens and Croix belonged, at least as the Rector of the Rachol Seminary.
Fr Simao Gomes, worked for many years as a Parish priest in Salcette, Goa and attained proficiency in the local language of Salcette. While most of the other contemporary Christian literature is written in the Roman script, this is written in the Devnagari script and is titled, Sarveshwaracha Dnyanopadesha. In 1709, he started a Christian mission in Dessu (Deccan region of Maharashtra). It has 360 pages and is written in Marathi prose, probably for the Marathi speaking people of the Deccan in Maharashtra. He died at Rachol in 1722.
Fr Miguel de Almeida S J was a Portuguese He was the author of ‘Garden of Shepherds’ (Jardin dos Pastores) in the Canarin language which is fortunately available in the Historical Archives of Goa. He also wrote, ‘Sermon on the Apostle St. Peter’. He also enlarged the Vocabuario da Lingua Canarin, originally written by Fr. Diogo Ribeiro.
Yet another Jesuit, Fr Joao de Pedrosa, S J wrote in the lingua bramana (another name for the Konkani of the time) and published the Divine Soliloquies in 1660. He was for some time the Rector of the Rachol Seminary. He passed away in Goa in 1672.
This article would be incomplete without mentioning, Joaquim H da Cunha Rivara (1809-1879), Portuguese physician, Professor intellectual and the Chief Secretary of the government. In his well-known essay on the Konkani language, he vehemently criticised Goans for their neglect of what he considered to be their only language. Rivara was a native of Évora and in the course of my study in the Public library of Évora, I noticed that there were many Konkani language manuscripts and books preserved here. The government of Goa needs to get back through official channels, or at least the digital copies if not the originals! It seems the Chief Secretary had used his power, to take home with him the important manuscripts and books, which he donated it to the public library in his hometown. This is the only library in Portugal that does not permit to xerox old facsimiles but instead offers photographs in a pen drive to the researcher. The rules of taking care of the manuscripts here are by far the strictest in Portugal.
The practice of reading passages from the Marathi Christ Purana in the churches of Goa sed in 1776 when it was forbidden by the Archbishop of Goa, D Francisco da Assunçao. The role of these European Jesuit Catholic priests, who spent their life in Goa and died here, has gone unrecognised. Both the Marathi and the Konkani Academies need to encourage deeper research in this area to understand the important role played by these stalwarts in the development of the mother tongues of Goans.
(Prof (Dr) Sushila Sawant Mendes is an author and professor in History,
Govt College of Arts, Science & Commerce, Quepem)
