Scholarship on the Jesuit missions in India has recently become a less occult and partisan historiographical field. It is no more an apologetic project, nor a spiteful critique popular among the 19th –century Protestant scholars and missionaries. Why studying Jesuit sources? Because they are a window into early modern and modern Indian and global history. When analyzed critically, these sources provide a different perspective on various actors, events and historical directions. At times they are also the only written documents about communities and their histories. In this volume, without trying to be exhaustive in terms of chronology and topics, the intention of the editors was to present the new scholarship in the field and to show how the interdisciplinary border-crossing can stimulate further research.
Anand Amaladass
Preface
Ines G. Županov
Prologue: Perils of Translation: Missionary Writing in/on South Asia (16th-18th c.)
Part I : Jesuit Mission between Theological Debates and Philosophical Reasons
Francis X. Clooney
The Pre-Suppression Jesuit Case against Rebirth, with Special Reference to India
Gérard Colas and Usha Colas-Chauhan
Une pensée en morceaux. Two Works from the Carnatic Mission: A Refutation of Metempsychosis in Sanskrit and a Collection of Sermons in Telugu
Anand Amaladass
Early Jesuit Mission Methods in Asia, with Special Reference to the Ñānōpadēcak kurippiṭam (“Catechism”) of Roberto Nobili
Joan-Pau Rubiés
Reassessing ‘the Discovery of Hinduism’: the Jesuit Discourse on Gentile Idolatry and the European Republic of Letters
Will Sweetman
The Cessation of the Oracles: Authenticity and Authority in Jesuit Reports of Possession in South India
Part II :Anthropology of Conversion: Conflicts, Controversies, Accommodation, Resistance
Danna Agmon
Conflicts in the Context of Conversion: French Jesuits and Tamil Religious Intermediaries in Madurai, India
Ines G. Županov
Jesuit Proselytism versus Resilient Religious Pluralism; Two South Indian Missions in the 16th and 17th Centuries
Giuseppe Marcocci
Jesuit Missionaries and the Portuguese Inquisition in South Asia: A Controversial History (16th-18th Centuries)
Part III: Jesuit Mission: Science and Governance
Dhruv Raina
A Neglected field: The Historiographic Frames for Studying the Jesuit Sciences in India
Michael Sievernich
Geographical Mapping of India in 18th Century; The Contribution of the German Jesuit Joseph Tieffenthaler
Ricardo Ventura
Tombos dos pagodes: Mapping the Religious and Social Context of Rural Goa in the Early Modern Period
Cristina Murua
Father Gaspar de Aguilar – the Banished Genious
Notes on Contributors
