Missionary Life History in Tamil | Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg

Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (10 July 1682 – 23 February 1719) was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India.

Early life
Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 9 July 1682 to poor but devout Christian parents: Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg Sr. (1640–1694), a grain merchant, and Maria née Brückner (1646–1692). Through his father he was related to the sculptor Ernst Friedrich August Rietschel, and through his mother’s side to the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He showed an aptitude for music at an early age. He studied at the University of Halle under the teaching of August Hermann Francke, then the center of Pietistic Lutheranism. Under the patronage of King Frederick IV of Denmark, Ziegenbalg, along with his fellow student, Heinrich Plütschau, became the first Protestant missionaries to India. They arrived at the Danish colony of Tranquebar on 9 July 1706.

Missionary work
A church of the Syrian tradition was probably born in South India as far back in history as the third century, at least. KP Kesava Menon, in his forward to Christianity in India (Prakam, 1972), described a church typical of that tradition as “Hindu in culture, Christian in religion, and oriental in worship.”

Robinson laments the failure of the further forward moment of this potential dialogue between the two religions. He notes that even such supportive sympathisers of the European missionary’s endorsement of Hinduism as Roberto de Nobili and Ziegenbalg, despite their enthusiasm for this foreign faith, could never shake their conviction of the superiority of their own faith.

The propagation of the Gospel, despite Danish zeal, remained inchoate till at the dawn of the eighteenth century. Frederick IV of Denmark, under the influence of Dr. A. H. Francke, (1663–1727), a professor of divinity in the University of Halle (in Saxony), proposed that one of the professor’s eminently skilled and religiously enthusiastic pupils, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, be appointed to kindle in “the heathen at Tranquebar” the desired holy spark.

Literary work
1) Translations: The 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism and an explosion of translations of the New (and Old) Testament into the vernacular. After all this time spent in blood-wrenching and sweat-drenching scholarship, Ziegenbalg wrote numerous texts in Tamil, for dissemination among Hindus. He was fully conscious of the importance of print in the history of the Protestant Church.

Death and Legacy
Ziegenbalg was troubled by ill health his entire life, a condition aggravated by his work in the mission field. He died on 23 February 1719, at the age of thirty-six, in Tranquebar. His last 13 years were spent laying the foundations for German scholarship in Tamil that continues to this day. Ziegenbalg is buried at the New Jerusalem Church, which he helped establish in 1718 at Tranquebar.

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