Print, Performance, Manuscripts... and Print: Catholic missionary patronage changing strategies in 16th-19th c. Kerala

Several printing press were settled by Portuguese Missionaries in India, starting in Goa (St. Paul College, 1556). The printing activity extended to works in Indian languages after the Jesuit Provincial Congregation of Goa declared in 1575 that various instructional works should be prepared for the native Christians, including a Catechism, a Confessionary, a Doctrina Christiana and a Saints Lives. Fr Henrique Henriques (1520-1600) was ordered to prepare such works for the Tamil area. With the financial help of the Parava Christians of the Fishery Coast, using Tamil characters a small catechism Doctrina Christam or tampirān vaṇakkam was printed at the College of the Saviour, Quilon (Kollam), in 1578 ; then a longer Doctrina Christam or kiricittiyāni vaṇakkam and a Confessionairo were printed at the College of the Mother of God, Cochin (Kochi) respectively in 1579 and 1580, before a huge Flos Sanctorum was printed in 1586. However, no Catholic printing in Tamil language was thereafter produced until the Catechism of Fr Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) was printed in Ambalakad in 1675. The audience of such works seems to have been restricted to the priestly milieu of the Jesuit colleges and seminaries. In the meantime, a popular form of theatrical art, the caviṭṭu-nātakaṃ, inspired by native forms of theatre mixed with Christian themes, was developed in Roman Catholic communities under the same Jesuit patronage. In the 18th century, like the Tamil literary writings of Fr Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi (1680-1747), the Malayalam poetry of Arnos Padiri/Fr Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681-1732) aimed to provide the local Christians with works as beautifully carved as the ones of the Brahmin elite. In both cases the works circulated in manuscript form, became popular and were integrated in the local liturgy. The printing of a new Roman Catholic catechism by the Discalced Carmelite Clemens a Iesu (1731-1782) came only in 1772, and was this time produced in Rome, at the Propaganda Fide press: the Saṃskṣepavedārtthaṃ being the very first book printed in Malayalam characters, again restricted in its use to the local clergy. The first Malayalam printing press was only established in 1821 by the (Anglican) Church Missionary Society in Kottayam. Among the several books it printed, there was Arnos Padiri’s Miśihācaritraṃ (1844) and the Sanskrit (Hindu) Śrīrāmodantam (1850)