Missionaries’ contribution to the development of Language Science
Dr. Cristina Muru
The term linguistics refers to language science. According to the Genevan Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), considered the father of structuralism[1], Linguistics has three primary tasks. First of all, to describe as many historical-natural languages and language families as possible, both at a given historical (synchronic) moment and in their becoming along the temporal (diachronic) axis; both from the language’s internal point of view and the external perspective, hence the psycho-sociological point of view. Secondly, Linguistics has the task of identifying what are the principles and assumptions according to which languages work. Finally, it is the task of Linguistics to define its methods of investigation and its fundamental notions.
But when can we trace the emergence of this discipline? When can we start talking about the scientific study of language?
The harbingers of modern linguistics can certainly be traced in the Indian world (examples are the Tolkāppiyam, the oldest grammar of Tamil [1st-3rd cent. AD] and Aṣṭādhyāyī, the ancient grammar of Sanskrit [5th cent. BC]) and in Greek and Arabic world as well. However, in Europe, the birth of the scientific study of language and therefore of the discipline is usually associated with an event that took place in 18th century India, as it is usually reported in linguistics manuals. This is the presidential speech that Sir. William Jones (1746–1794) delivered to the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1786 during which he revealed to the world the similarity between geographically distant languages such as Sanskrit and Greek, but also the existing relationship between Sanskrit and other languages like Gothic and Celtic. From that moment, the fervour for the study of language, first of all for the historical-comparative reconstruction of the origins of the languages belonging to that great family called Indo-European to whose definition Jones contributed considerably, would soon be established. In the early 19th century, scholars such as Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835), Rasmus Kristian Rask (1787–1832), Franz Bopp (1791–1867), Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785–1863), August Schleicher (1821–1868) laid the theoretical foundations of this new science.
A great change therefore in the field of science. However, it is legitimate to ask why this discipline was established precisely in that period and not earlier. And it is precisely in the attempt to answer this question that the missionaries and their work of evangelisation massively promoted in the period of the so-called ‘great discoveries’ come into play. The cross often accompanied European merchants’s ships that from the 15th century left the European shores in search of adventure and riches. The evangelisation work followed the same routes travelled by the great expansions for which the missionary fathers, especially Jesuits, reached South America, Africa, India, the Far East, and all the most remote places towards which the merchants themselves ventured in search of luck.
Wherever they went, the Jesuit fathers devoted themselves to the meticulous study of local languages and cultures because this was their most effective strategy for spreading the Christian religion. They were convinced of the fact that it was through a deep knowledge of the Other — that they wanted to bring closer to themselves, and only through a good level of communication in the vernacular languages that were part of the linguistic repertoire of the Other, that missionaries could effectively spread the message of the Lord and bring back to the right path all those who had lost it.
In this perspective, the systematic study of local languages and cultures represented the main tools of evangelisation. In particular, the knowledge of vernacular languages, achieved through their accurate description and cataloguing, was essential to be sure that the Gospel message effectively reached the new converts. Therefore, the erudite Jesuit fathers were among the first to apply themselves to the systematic description of the new languages they were encountering, so particular and distant from those they knew, Latin and mainly Portuguese.
Slavishly applying the Latin grammatical model, they set about describing sounds and words of the new languages. They wrote grammars and compiled bi- and trilingual dictionaries and also translated religious texts such as Catechisms and Confessional Manuals into native languages so that the other fathers who had come to the missions could easily learn to converse with their converts.
In India, the first missionary fathers, who arrived from the 15th-cent. onwards with Vasco Da Gama (c. 1460–1524), landed on the Southern coasts of Coromandel first and then reached the Malabar coast. They devoted themselves to conversions and to the study and description of Southern Indian languages such as Malayalam, Konkani, and Tamil, just to name a few. Not all of these descriptions have survived, but what the European and Indian archives preserve today is certainly precious and inestimable.
An example of this treasure is represented by the early missionary grammars describing the Tamil language. One of the oldest grammar is the Arte composed by Henrique Henriques (1520–1600), a Jesuit who operated in the Fishery Coast (South — Eastern of Tamil Nadu region) and who professed the Christian religion mainly between one of the lower castes of the Indian society, the paravas, a caste of fishermen. We have only a single exemplar of his grammar which is currently at the National Library of Lisbon under the classification COD 3141. It is not an autograph document, but it has been officially recognized as being an original one.
Another early grammar, which is very similar to Henriques’ one, is manuscript Indien 188 (henceforth Ind. 188). The author is unknown but the text is inestimable since it devotes a full section to the explanation of how to build sentences in Tamil presenting many linguistic data. The manuscript is kept at the National Library of France in Paris. Since it shares many structural features with Henriques’ text, it can be considered as the second oldest missionary grammar of Tamil nowadays existing. Indeed, the later grammars discussed below clearly show different structure and grammatical terminology revealing a different grammatical model of reference when compared to Henrique’s text and Ind. 188. This might be explained by the fact that in 1599 Ratio Studiorum promoted the abridged version of the Latin grammar composed by Manuel Álvares (1526–1582) (Ars Minor, 1573) as a textbook for teaching the Latin language in all the Jesuit colleges. Subsequently, Álvares’ grammar became one of the texts most widely translated into different European languages and was adapted to the study of non-European languages in various parts of the world, becoming the principal reference model for most missionaries.
One of the first grammar in which this model of reference appeared is the Arte Tamul composed by the Portuguese Jesuit Gaspar de Aguilar (1548-?). Even though this grammar still shows some common features with Henriques’ text and Ind. 188 in the grammatical terminology and in the categories used for describing Tamil, it can be considered as the first Jesuit grammars where the alvaresian model manifested. The only manuscript which partially reproduces Aguilar’s text is Cod. Orient. 283 kept at the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl Von Ossietzky since 1734. The manuscript is associated with Philippus Baldaeus (1632–1671), a pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church and an appointee of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) in Sri Lanka. However, in the preface, it is mentioned that the text was based on Aguilar’s grammar.
Another relevant grammar, which would have circulated among Protestants too, was the Arte da lingua Tamul by Balthasar Da Costa’s (ca. 1610–1673). Costa professed the Christian religion, first in Vembār, a South–Eastern coastal village, and then in the internal regions near Madurai. His grammar followed the alavaresian model dealing not only with noun declensions and verb conjugations but also with interjections, adverbs, and postpositions. Five different manuscripts of this grammar exist today and they are preserved in various European and Indian archives.
All the early grammars that have been discussed so far represent the tools through which Jesuits could learn Tamil: the examples these texts provide can be considered a “missionary’s jargon” prepared with the aim to convey the necessary concepts to the Indians. They are representative of the first examples of a systematic study of a language like Tamil which was realised through the application of the Latin grammatical framework.
The missionary grammars produced all around the world described a large number of languages, many of which were characterised by an oral tradition only. As a consequence, these descriptions contributed to the accumulation of a large amount of linguistic data which, from the 16th cent. onwards, reached Europe enriching the knowledge about non-European languages. Hence, many of the scholars who later contributed to the born of Linguistics benefitted from the data collected all around the world by missionaries. Therefore, the spreading of this new knowledge about non-European languages gradually lead to the kind of observations like that one by Jones to which we referred at the beginning of this text. In conclusion, we can say that the meticulous work carried out by missionaries largely and undoubtedly contributed to the development of that discipline that is now referred to as Linguistics.
About the Author:
Cristina Muru is a Researcher and Adjunct Professor in Linguistics at the DISTU Department (Department of Linguistics and Literature, Historical-Economic Studies and Law), the University of Tuscia in Viterbo (Italy). Her research interests include Historical Sociolinguistics, Missionary Linguistics, and the History of the Language Sciences. She has worked extensively on archival documents and published studies on the language contact in the southern part of India between Portuguese and Tamil from the sixteenth century onward. In particular, she has studied how the early missionary grammars of the Tamil language contribute to the history of the language sciences and Tamil studies. In the Historical Sociolinguistics framework, she has also worked on language contact in the Mediterranean area in the modern era between Venice and the Levant.
[1] Structuralism is a theory and methodology established in various sciences from the beginning of the 20th century. Based on the assumption that each object of study constitutes a structure, it considers the object of study as an organic and global whole whose elements have no autonomous functional value but takes on their value in oppositional and distinctive relations of each element with respect to all the others of the whole.
