Dravidian Studies
Dravidian studies (also Dravidology) is the academic field devoted to the Dravidian languages, literature, and Dravidian culture, culture. It is a superset of Tamil studies and a subset of South Asian studies. Early missionaries The 16th to 18th century missionaries who wrote Tamil grammars or lexica include Henrique Henriques, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Constantino Giuseppe Beschi. Dravidian language hypothesis The recognition that the Dravidian languages were a phylogenetic unit separate from Indo-European dates to 1816, and was presented by Francis Whyte Ellis, F. W. Ellis, Collector of Madras, at the College of Fort St. George. Nineteenth-century experts The 19th century contributors to the field of Dravidology were: Twentieth-century experts The noted Dravidologists from the twentieth century are: Contemporary programs The Dravidian University at Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh has created Chairs in the names of Western and Dravidian scholars to encourage research in in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dravidian Languages
The Dravidian languages (or sometimes Dravidic) are a family of languages spoken by 250 million people, mainly in southern India, north-east Sri Lanka, and south-west Pakistan. Since the colonial era, there have been small but significant immigrant communities in Mauritius, Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, United Kingdom, Australia, France, Canada, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. The Dravidian languages are first attested in the 2nd century BCE, as Tamil-Brahmi script, inscribed on the cave walls in the Madurai and Tirunelveli districts of Tamil Nadu. The Dravidian languages with the most speakers are (in descending order of number of speakers) Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, all of which have long literary traditions. Smaller literary languages are Tulu and Kodava. There are also a number of Dravidian-speaking scheduled tribes, such as the Kurukh in Eastern India and Gondi in Central India. Outside of India, Brahui is mo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thembavani
''Thembavani'' ( ta, தேம்பாவணி; ) is a Tamil classic poetical work by Veeramamunivar ( Costanzo Beschi) on the life of St. Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus Christ. It is divided into thirty-six ''cantos'', containing 3,615 stanzas. Story The poem begins with the birth of Joseph, called Valan. He becomes a staunch ascetic who later marries Mary, a resolute virgin. Through divine intervention, Mary gives birth to a son. The following episodes describe the family's lives. The work ends with Valan's coronation by the Triune God in heavenly glory. Finally, kings from the Holy Roman Empire (England, Ireland, Spain, Gaul, Prussia, Norway, Lusitania, Genoa, Etruria, Parthia, Cyprus, Paeonia) come to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold I to install the statue of the hero of the epic. ''Thembavani'' has more than 100 references to events and teachings in the Bible. It has an abundance of historical, biblical and fictional characters, including Moses, Joshua, Gi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ferdinand Kittel
Reverend Ferdinand Kittel was a Lutheran priest and indologist with the Basel Mission in south India and worked in Mangalore, Madikeri and Dharwad in Karnataka. He is most famous for his studies of the Kannada language and for producing a Kannada-English dictionary of about 70,000 words in 1894. He also composed numerous Kannada poems.Journal of the Karnatak University: Humanities: Volume 19 Karnatak University - 1975 "He was also involved in the work of the revision of the Kannada Bible. But his magnum opus was the school dictionary English- Kannada Shala Nighantu, which saw the light of the day in 1876. Though William Reeve (missionary) compiled and published ..." Early life He was born 7 April 1832.Resterhafe, East Frisia Friesland, off the northwestern coast of Germany. The father Gottfried Christian Kittel was Gaz Freit, a priest. Mother Tudov Helen Hubert. Kittel is the eldest of his 5 children. His education was praised by the headmaster as "Never Less Than Good." Join th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hermann Gundert
Hermann Gundert ( Stuttgart, 4 February 1814 – 25 April 1893 in Calw, Germany) was a German missionary, scholar, and linguist, as well as the maternal grandfather of German novelist and Nobel laureate Hermann Hesse. Gundert is chiefly known for his contributions as an Indologist, and compiled a Malayalam grammar book, ''Malayalabhaasha Vyakaranam'' (1859), in which he developed and constricted the grammar spoken by the Malayalis, nowadays; a Malayalam-English dictionary (1872), and contributed to work on Bible translations into Malayalam. He worked primarily at Thalassery on the Malabar coast, in Kerala, India. Gundert also contributed to the fields of history, geography and astronomy. Early years Hermann Gundert was born to Ludwig Gundert and Christiana Enslin, and was the couple's third child. His father was the secretary of the Bible Society, and started a missionary magazine in 1823, which gave the young Gundert his first experiences in printing and publishing. At the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Robert Caldwell
Robert Caldwell (7 May 1814 – 28 August 1891) was a missionary for London Missionary Society. He arrived in India at age 24, studied the local language to spread the word of Bible in a vernacular language, studies that led him to author a text on comparative grammar of the South Indian languages. In his book, Caldwell proposed that there are Dravidian words in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the archaic Greek language, and the places named by Ptolemy. Caldwell married Eliza Mault, the daughter of another missionary posted in India. He served as assistant bishop of Tirunelveli from 1877. The Government of Tamil Nadu has created a memorial in his honor and a postage stamp has been issued in his name. A statue of Caldwell was erected in 1967 near to Marina Beach, Chennai, as a gift of the Church of South India. Early life Robert Caldwell was born at Clady, then in County Antrim, Ireland, on 7 May 1814 to poor Scottish Presbyterian parents. The family moved to Glasgow and t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Francis Whyte Ellis
Francis Whyte Ellis (1777–1819) was a British civil servant in the Madras Presidency and a scholar of Tamil and Sanskrit. Biography Ellis became a writer in the East India Company's service at Madras in 1796. He was promoted to the offices of assistant-under secretary, deputy-secretary, and secretary to the board of revenue in 1798, 1801, and 1802 respectively. In 1806 he was appointed judge of the zillah of Machilipatnam, in 1809 collector of land customs in the Madras presidency, and in 1810 collector of Madras. He died at Ramnad of cholera on 10 March 1819. Dravidian language hypothesis Ellis is the first scholar who classified the Dravidian languages as a separate language family. Robert Caldwell, who is often credited as the first scholar to propose a separate language family for South Indian languages, acknowledges Ellis's contribution in his preface to the first edition of ''A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian or South Indian Family of Languages'': The first to b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament's background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians. The New Testament is a collection of Christian texts originally written in the Koine Greek language, at different times by various authors. While the Old Testament canon varies somewhat between different Christian denominations, the 27-book canon of the New Testament has been almost universally recognized within Christianity since at least Late Antiquity. Thus, in almost all Christian traditions today, the New Testament consists of 27 books: * 4 canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) * The Acts of the Apostl ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Old Testament
The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in the Koine Greek language. The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (corresponds to the Jewish Torah); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon; the poetic and " Wisdom books" dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tranquebar
Tharangambadi (), formerly Tranquebar ( da, Trankebar, ), is a town in the Mayiladuthurai district of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu on the Coromandel Coast. It lies north of Karaikal, near the mouth of a distributary named Uppanar of the Kaveri River. Tranquebar was established on 19 November 1620 as the first Danish trading post in India. King Christian IV had sent his envoy Ove Gjedde who established contact with Raghunatha Nayak of Tanjore. An annual tribute was paid by the Danes to the Rajah of Tanjore until the colony of Tranquebar was sold to the British East India Company in 1845. Tharangambadi is the headquarters of Tharangambadi taluk. Its name means "place of the singing waves"; the old designation ''Trankebar'' remains current in modern Danish. Tharangambadi is located at the distance of 285 km from Chennai. The nearest airport is at Tiruchirapalli international airport at 172 km and the nearest port is at Karaikal at 26 km. History The place date ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pietist
Pietism (), also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christianity, Christian life, including a social concern for the needy and disadvantaged. It is also related to its non-Lutheran (but largely Lutheran-descended) Radical Pietism offshoot that either diversified or spread into various denominations or traditions, and has also had a contributing influence over the Interdenominationalism, interdenominational Evangelicalism, Evangelical Christianity movement. Although the movement is aligned exclusively within Lutheranism, it had a tremendous impact on Protestantism worldwide, particularly in North America and Europe. Pietism originated in modern Germany in the late 17th century with the work of Philipp Spener, a Lutheran theologian whose emphasis on personal transformation through spiritual rebirth and renewal, individual devotion, and piety laid the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |