My dissertation project is based on the relationship between the Lutheran–Pietist mission in Tranquebar (1706–1845) and similar locations, and the other Christian denominations, particularly the Roman Catholics, that also promoted their faith in southern India in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The first documented reference by a Lutheran to other Christians is found in the letters of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719), who was the first Pietist missionary to work in India and translated the Bible into Tamil. The German missionaries sent from Halle were able to establish themselves in Tranquebar thanks to the support of the Danish King, Frederick IV (1671–1730). Most of the Lutheran missionaries prepared for their missionary work at the educational institutions in Halle founded by August Hermann Francke (1663–1727). To explore this topic, I use the communications of the Tranquebar missionaries, which are known as the Halle Reports (Hallesche Berichte, 1710–72) and the New Halle Reports (Neue Hallesche Berichte, 1776–1848).
One of the most important Pietist missionaries in India was Benjamin Schultze (1689–1760), who founded the first Protestant mission in Madras. Schultze, who came from the Neumark region (today in Poland), was sent to India in 1718. He initially settled in the Danish trading town of Tranquebar, where he completed the translation of the Bible into Tamil that had been started by Ziegenbalg. However, conflicts later arose with the other missionaries based there. This may have been one reason for his decision to settle in Madras in 1726, where he entered the service of the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), which had been founded in 1698 by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Bray (1656/1658–1730) in 1698. A letter from Francke reveals that he urged Schultze, who translated parts of the Book of Common Prayer into Tamil, to ‘prevent all religious syncretism’. There were fears that the mission would become ‘Anglicanized’.1 Since Madras (modern-day Chennai) is located in an area where the Dravidian language Telugu was and still is spoken, Schultze felt compelled to learn it as well. In the years that followed, he translated a large number of Christian texts into Telugu and also wrote a grammar book, the Grammatica Telugica.2

However, before Lutheran missionaries came to India, Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries had long been active among the communities located along the Coromandel Coast and had established a large Catholic community. In Madras, for example, where many Catholic soldiers were employed by the British East India Company, the Capuchin mission was established in 1642 with the permission of the British authorities. Many Tamil Catholics were converted to Lutheranism by the Tranquebar missionaries between 1706 and 1845.
Most of the correspondence between the Tranquebar missionaries and the SPCK has been preserved in the archives of Cambridge University Library, partly in handwritten and partly in printed form. Other British institutions also hold relevant correspondence between India and England, such as the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. During my stay in London, I analysed some very interesting primary sources on the Tranquebar Mission and gained insight into its reception in eighteenth-century England. I also spent time in the British Library and Lambeth Palace Library, where many documents about the connections between England and the Protestant missions in India are preserved.
Interdenominational Christian Piety?
Although the German Lutheran missionaries were very suspicious of the Roman Catholic Church, they benefited from the linguistic groundwork laid by the Jesuit missionaries in the Tamil language. Ziegenbalg was particularly enthusiastic about the ‘Sunday Gospels, [which] were translated into the Malabar language so long ago by the Paulists (Jesuits) here on the Coromandel Coast’; they were probably the work of a Jesuit who ‘walked among the Malabars dressed in Brahmin clothing’.3 Although Catholic missionaries did not translate the Bible in its entirety or for a broad readership, this does not mean that their contribution to the dissemination of the Holy Scriptures in India was insignificant. Their efforts to develop a Christian vocabulary proved useful, not only for Catholic communities but also for Protestant missions. Translations of selected Bible texts and liturgical books by the Catholic mission proved to be an effective means of learning local languages, even in the later development of Protestant missionary work in Asia.
A good example of this can be found in the reports of the London Missionary Society from the early decades of the nineteenth century. The English missionary Edward Pritchett (1772–1824) was sent to Burma in 1810 to establish a mission there together with Jonathan Couch Brain (1786–1810). After Brain’s early death, Pritchett went to India, where he settled in Vizagapatnam (now Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh) and worked on a translation of the Bible into Telugu. Despite only staying briefly in Burma, he was able to acquire some knowledge of the Burmese language, as he reported from Calcutta in 1811:
I cannot say that I got on fast with the Birman Language, however I made progress, & latterly found my pace was increasing. I had copied off a Translation of all the Collects, Epistels & Gospels of the Romish Church, from Advent to Whit Sunday, (they have a greater number than the Church of England) besides a pretty long dialogue between a Burman & an Italian Padree, & had also made a pretty copious vocabulary . . . but the greater part was of my own obtaining from the writings which I studied.4
Pritchett’s use of Catholic translations to learn the Burmese language is impressive evidence of the extent to which Protestant missionaries in the nineteenth century were still dependent on the linguistic groundwork laid by Catholic clergy. They did not necessarily reject the liturgical books of the Catholic Church. The extremely rich material offered by the Catholic liturgy provided a wide range of opportunities for learning foreign languages. For example, the readings from the Gospel and the Epistles during celebration of the Catholic Mass, which were translated into the local language, were unmistakably drawn from the biblical tradition common to the various other denominations, and the collection prayers were not entirely foreign to the Reformation tradition either. Furthermore, by not outright rejecting the linguistic groundwork already laid by Catholic missionaries in the form of translations into local languages, the Protestant missionaries reduced their own workload.

The policy of ‘accommodation’ used by the Jesuits in their Indian missions was an attempt to adapt Christianity to local customs. In contrast, the Lutheran missionaries did not adapt their confession to the Catholic faith; rather, they adopted many different methods to facilitate the spread of Christianity in Tamil Nadu. The Tranquebar missionaries’ astonishing receptiveness to Indian culture also attests to their interest in the linguistic and confessional influence of Catholicism in India. A detailed examination of the Tranquebar missionaries’ reports and letters preserved in English archives would reveal how these texts contributed to knowledge of Indian Catholicism and, indirectly, to the development of Indology.
Featured image: A view of the Danish colony of Tranquebar with the Dansborg fortress in south-east India, c.1658. Photo by Jens Mohr. Public domain, courtesy of Skokloster Castle, Sweden.
- Wilhelm Germann, Johann Philipp Fabricius: Seine fünfzigjährige Wirksamkeit im Tamulenlande und das Missionsleben des 18. Jahrhunderts daheim und draussen, nach handschriftlichen Quellen geschildert (Erlangen, 1865), 133–4; Hans-Werner Gensichen, ‘Die konfessionelle Stellung der dänisch-halleschen Mission’, Evangelische Missionszeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und evangelische Religionskunde, 13/1–2 (1956), 1–19, at 15. [↩]
- Gérald Duverdier, ‘L’oeuvre en télugu de Benjamin Schultze’, Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême Orient, 63 (1976), 265–312, at 303; Reinhold Vormbaum: Benjamin Schultze, evangelischer Missionar in Trankebar und Madras: Nach seinem Leben und Wirken (Elberfeld, 1859); Heike Liebau, ‘Die “Grammatica hindostanica” von Benjamin Schultze und ihr Platz in der Erforschung der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Hindustani’, in Buchard Brentjes (ed.), Wissenschaftsbeziehungen zwischen Halle und Indien in Tradition und Gegenwart (Halle, 1987), 7–17; Heike Liebau, ‘Deutsche Missionare als Indienforscher. Benjamin Schultze (1689–1760): Ausnahme oder Regel?’ Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 76 (1994), 111–33; Kurt Liebau, ‘Der Missionar Benjamin Schultze: Eine Notiz zu seiner Korrespondenz und sein Beitrag zur Herausbildung der vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft’, in Heike Link and Thomas Müller-Bahlke (eds.), Zeichen und Wunder: Geheimnisse des Schriftenschranks in der Kunst- und Naturalienkammer der Franckeschen Stiftungen (Halle, 2003), 94–109; Adapa Satyanarayana, ‘The Contribution of Benjamin Schultze to Telugu Language and Learning’, in Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and Heike Liebau (eds.), Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India, vol. iii: Communication between India and Europe (Halle, 2006), 1163–80; Adapa Satyanarayana, ‘Benjamin Schultze (1689–1760): The Foremost Telugu Linguist’, in Heike Liebau, Andreas Nehring, and Brigitte Klosterberg (eds.), Mission und Forschung: Translokale Wissensproduktion zwischen Indien und Europa im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Halle, 2010), 239–55. [↩]
- Wilhelm Germann, ‘Ziegenbalgs Bibliotheca Malabarica’, Missionsnachrichten der Ostindischen Missionsanstalt zu Halle, 32 (1880), 1–20, at 9. [↩]
- SOAS London CWM/LMS South India General. Incoming correspondence. Box 1. Folder n. 1. Jacket Letter B. 1796–1812. Letter from Edward Pritchett (Calcutta, 25 Feb. 1811), fol. 74–5. [↩]
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Gabriele Bellinzona (February 9, 2026). The Danish–English–Halle Mission (1706–1845) and its Connection to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. German Historical Institute London Blog. Retrieved March 6, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15nep
