Zigunbalq Missionary Biography

Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was a member of the Lutheran clergy and the first Pietist missionary to India. Wikipedia
Born: 10 July 1682, Pulsnitz, Germany
Died: 23 February 1719, Tharangambadi

Pioneer German missionary in South India ... Ziegenbalg, the prototype of German pietist Lutheran missionaries.
Ziegenbalg was born in Pulsnitz, Saxony, on 10 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.
Tranquebar Mission
Main article: Tranquebar Mission

Statue of Ziegenbalg
"Though the piety and zeal of Protestants had often excited an anxious desire to propagate the pure and reformed faith of the gospel in heathen countries, the establishment and defence against the Polish adversaries at home, together with the want of suitable opportunities and facilities for so great a work, combined during the first century after the Reformation, to prevent them from making any direct or vigorous efforts for this purpose.
The arrival of the first press in Goa was rejoiced at by St. Francis Xavier who had been preaching the gospel in Goa and in Tranquebar since 1542. Then inexplicably, and, significantly, all presses died out in India. Tamil printing seems to have stopped after 1612. Records show that the last books in Latin and Portuguese were printed in Goa in 1674

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
A page from the Tamil New Testament published by Ziegenbalg

Death:
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