THE ORIGINS OF EUROPEAN INDOLOGY: BARTHOLOMEUS ZIEGENBALG’S LETTER ON INDIA

2020 ◽  
pp. 171-180
Author(s):  
X. D. Nikolskaia ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
German City ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Danish East India Company (Dansk Østindisk Kompagni) was established in Europe. The stronghold of the Danes in India was the city of Tranquebar (Dansborg fortress). At the beginning of the 18th century, the first Lutheran missionaries landed on the Coromandel Coast. They came to India from the German city of Halle. The University of Halle at this time was a center of pietism closely associated with the “Danish Royal mission” in Southern India. This mission was funded by king Frederick IV, but from the very beginning of its existence was staffed mainly by Germans. One of the first missionaries in Tranquebar was Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg. He lived in India from 1706 to 1719. His name is well known to modern orientalists, as he was among the first Europeans to study Indian languages and Indian culture. All the years of his life in Tranquebar, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg was engaged in translating Christian literature into Tamil, and he also compiled the first grammatical reference of this language. A large number of the pastor’s letters to his friends and colleagues have been preserved. Most of these letters have been published for today. But part of it is still stored in the archives. Mainly in his letters, the pastor talks about the work of the mission: converting local residents to Christianity, creating a printing house and publishing Christian literature, opening a school for children in Tranquebar and working in it. Only a small part of the letters contains detailed stories about Tranquebar, local traditions, religious views of the natives, etc. This publication provides a translation of one of Ziegenbalg’s letters, which includes answers to questions about India that the pastor’s friends asked in their messages.

This Is an Abridged Account of Delhi Which Is an Old City and One of the Chosen Ones amongst the Cities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirza Sangin Beg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Work Spaces ◽  
History Of ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The City ◽  
Cost Of Construction

The second part of the translation has three segments. The first is dedicated to the history of Delhi from the time of the Mahabharat to the periods of Anangpal Tomar to the Mughal Emperor Humayun as also Sher Shah, the Afghan ruler. In the second and third segments Mirza Sangin Beg adroitly navigates between twin centres of power in the city. He writes about Qila Mubarak, or the Red Fort, and gives an account of the several buildings inside it and the cost of construction of the same. He ambles into the precincts and mentions the buildings constructed by Shahjahan and other rulers, associating them with some specific inmates of the fort and the functions performed within them. When the author takes a walk in the city of Shahjahanabad, he writes of numerous residents, habitations of rich, poor, and ordinary people, their mansions and localities, general and specialized bazars, the in different skills practised areas, places of worship and revelry, processions exemplifying popular culture and local traditions, and institutions that had a resonance in other cultures. The Berlin manuscript gives generous details of the officials of the English East India Company, both native and foreign, their professions, and work spaces. Mirza Sangin Beg addresses the issue of qaum most unselfconsciously and amorphously.

Conversations with the Malabar Pagans (according to the Documents of the Danish Royal Tranquebar Mission)

2021 ◽  
pp. 259
Author(s):  
Kseniia D. Nikolskaia
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Hindu Religion ◽  
The University ◽  
Local Languages ◽  
Coromandel Coast

At the beginning of the 17th century, the Danish East India company (Dansk Østindisk Kompagni) was established in Europe. In particular, Tranquebar (Dansborg fortress) became the stronghold of the Danes in India. In another hundred years, at the very beginning of the 18th century, the first Lutheran missionaries appeared on the Coromandel coast. At this time the Danish Royal mission was established in Tranquebar, funded by king Frederick IV. It consisted mainly of Germans who graduated from the University of the Saxon city of Halle. Those missionaries not only actively preached among the local population, but also studied languages of the region, translated Gospels into local languages and then published it in the printing house they created. They also trained neophytes from among the local children. One of the first missionaries in Tranquebar was pastor Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, who lived in India from 1706 to 1719. Information about Pastor's activities in the Royal Danish mission has been preserved in his letters and records. These letters and papers were regularly printed in Halle in the reports of the Royal Danish Mission («Ausführliche Berichte an, die von der königlichen dänischen Missionaren aus Ost-Indien»). However, besides letters and reports, this edition constantly published texts of a special kind, called «conversations» (das Gespräch). They looked like dialogues between pastor Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and local religious authorities. Those brahmans explained the basic principles of the Hindu religion, and their opponent showed them the absurdity of their creed by comparing it with the main tenets of Christianity. The following is a translation of one of these dialogues.

scholarly journals Utica’s urban centre from Augustus to the Antonines

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 66-96
Author(s):  
Imed Ben Jerbania ◽  
J. Andrew Dufton ◽  
Elizabeth Fentress ◽  
Ben Russell
Keyword(s):  
Building Materials ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Aerial Photographs ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
University Of Oxford ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The University ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Since 2010, a team from the Tunisian Institut National du Patrimoine and the University of Oxford1 has been investigating Utica’s monumental centre, located at the tip of the promontory on which the city is built (fig. 1). The range and scale of architectural elements littering this area were remarked upon by most antiquarian investigators of the site. Nathan Davis, working at the site in 1858, noted that, despite the fact that it “had been ransacked for building materials”, this part of the city was covered with “marble and granite shafts, capitals, and cornices, of every order, size, and dimension”.2 Alfred Daux even observed that local residents referred to the largest building of the zone as the “Dar Es Sultan” (Palace of the Sultan), such was its magnificence.3 Aerial photographs commissioned by A. Lézine in the 1950s (fig. 2) show the area at the head of the promontory almost completely robbed out during and immediately after the Second World War, giving it a rather desolate aspect.

scholarly journals I ANLEDNING 300-ÅRSJUBILEET: JOHAN ERNST GUNNERUS OG “AGDERS GUNNERUS” – ET BIDRAG TIL Å FORSTÅ HVORFOR BISKOP GUNNERUS FORESLO ET NORSK UNIVERSITET I KRISTIANSAND I 1771

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 233-246
Author(s):  
Ernst Hakon Jahr
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Seminal Contribution ◽  
University College ◽  
Scientific Reputation ◽  
The University ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The City ◽  
Science And Research

The paper is written in connection with the 2018 300th anniversary of the birth of the professor and bishop, Johan Ernst Gunnerus (1718–1773), who founded modern science in Norway and who, in 1760, also founded the first learned society in the country: The Royal Norwegian Society of Sciences and Letters in Trondheim. In 1758 Professor Gunnerus was appoined the bishop for the whole of northern Norway, as the bishop of Trondheim. In 1771 Bishop Gunnerus was called to the capital of the then Danish-Norwegian kingdom, Copenhagen, with the mission of reforming the Copenhagen university, at that time the only university in the entire dual kingdom. In his recommendation for reforms of the university, he also included a proposal for the establishment of a university in Norway. In this proposal, he argued for the city of Kristiansand as the most suitable location for that university. If the King would follow his recommendation, he would himself move to Kristiansand and also bring with him the Royal Society from Trondheim. Many people have subsequently wondered why he chose to point to Kristiansand for the establishment of the first Norwegian university, and not Oslo (where the university was finally opened in 1813) or Trondheim (where he had founded the Royal Society 11 years earlier). It has been thought that Gunnerus suggested Kristiansand mainly because the fact that the city was close to Denmark and a university there could perhaps have also recruited students from northern Jutland. Some have even suggested that Gunnerus proposed Kristiansand because he knew it would not be acceptable to Copenhagen or to the King, and then Trondheim (his “real” wish) could then emerge as a more plausible candidate, even if it was situated rather far north. In this paper, I argue that until now everybody who has discussed Gunnerus' choice of location for a Norwegian university has missed one decisive point: before Gunnerus moved from Copenhagen (where he was professor) to Trondheim (as bishop), Kristiansand was known in Norway, Denmark and the rest of Europe as the Norwegian centre for science and research. This was due to just one man, Bishop Jens Christian Spidberg (1684–1762). I show how Spidberg established himself through international publications as the leading scientist in Norway, and how everybody with a scientific question during the first half of the 18th century looked to Kristiansand and Spidberg for the answer. This, I argue, gaveKristiansand an academic and scientific reputation that Gunnerus was very well aware of and could exploit in his recommendation of Kristiansand as the location for the first Norwegian university. However, this knowledge about this reputation of Kristiansand’s in the first half of the 18th century has since been lost completely, mostly because Gunnerus’ fundamental seminal contribution in the second half of the 18th century has completely overshadowed the academic situation in Norway before his time. Finally in 2007 a university, the University of Agder, was established in Kristiansand, on the basis of a university college with academic roots going back to 1828. An academy of science, the Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters, was founded in 2002. A formal agreement of cooperation between the Royal Society and the then university college was signed 2001, and the academy joined the agreement in 2005. This agreement confirmed the long academic ties between Kristiansand and Trondheim, going all the way back to the scientific positions first held by Spidberg in Kristiansand and then by Gunnerus in Trondheim.

scholarly journals EMILIO GABBA E LA BIBLIOTECA DI FAMIGLIA

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Bono
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

The paper discusses the origins and the main features of Emilio Gabba’s familial library. It highlights the connection between his interests as a historian and the various books in the catalogue. The library itself was created in the 18th century by the Visconti, a family of notaries from Pavia, deeply connected with the cultural environment of the city and with its university. Among the most important books in this library, many works are written by historians and political thinkers, in addition to several legal texts. A few books underline the family’s interesting in Jansenism, which had spread to the university of Pavia, at the same time as the reforms wished by Empress Maria Teresa of Austria.

scholarly journals ‘The City of the Eye’: Urban Aesthetics and Surveillance in the City of Venice

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Whybrow
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Visual Observation ◽  
Associate Professor ◽  
Urban Context ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
The University ◽  
Formal Controls ◽  
Urban Aesthetics ◽  
The City

Joseph Brodsky’s assertion in Watermark (1992) that Venice ‘is the city of the eye’, providing a sense of security and solace to inhabitants and visitors via the sheer aesthetic force of its surroundings, implicitly raises questions, in the context of the twenty-first-century city, about the performative nature of not only modern-day urban aesthetics but also surveillance in public space, both of which, as phenomena, are dependent on forms of visual observation. Taking into account contemporary Venice’s complex make-up in terms of its transient and permanent populations – tourists, economic migrants, and local residents – and the central issue facing the city of the gradual erosion of its historical infrastructure owing to excesses of commercialism and the material effects of flooding, in this article Nicolas Whybrow ponders the continuing role of aesthetics in an urban context. In particular, he considers how both Brodsky’s perception of the effects of the historical environment and contemporary instances of artistic intervention or engagement with the city – official (as part of the globally renowned Biennale) and unofficial (in the form of graffiti writing) – might position users of public space in the light of increased attempts to implement formal controls in the interests of security. Nicolas Whybrow is Associate Professor (Reader) and Head of Department in the School of Theatre, Performance, and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. His most recent books are Art and the City (2011) and, as editor, Performing Cities (2014).

De trekvliet en de maliebaan in Leiden

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 306-317
Author(s):  
Martijn Storms
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Hague ◽  
City Walls ◽  
The University ◽  
The City

Abstract The Trekvliet canal and the pall-mall at Leiden Pall-mall was a popular lawn game in the 17th century. The oldest pall-mall in the Netherlands was built in The Hague in 1606. Leiden was one of the universities with such a facility. In 1581, Leiden University already had several courts for ball sports. Some manuscript maps show their locations outside the city walls. The building of a pall-mall in Leiden coincided with the digging of the canal for horse-drawn boats to The Hague and Delft. The first plans for a boat canal probably date from around 1633 and the canal was completed in 1637. Alongside, between the boat canal and the Leiden city walls, a pall-mall was built, about 700 meters in length. The university bought some plots of land from the Leiden orphanage, on which the lawn was built. The history of the building of the boat canal and pall-mall is documented in several property maps and town plans that have survived. In the university’s archive, a concept of regulations of the Leiden pall-mall is kept, which gives insight in how the game had to be played and into the rules that the students had to adhere to. The pall-mall remained in use until at least the end of the 18th century. On the cadastral plan from the early 19th century (1811-1832) the strip of land is still owned by the university but indicated as ‘economic garden’ and the heyday of pall-mall was over.

English Colonial Discourse and India

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Indian Languages ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
And Control

English protocolonial and colonial discourses constructed India across multiple fields in the 1600–1947 period. These discourses determined and were determined by various concerns, necessities, and anxieties, and documented extensively by English administrators, statesmen, traders, wives of the officials, soldiers, reform workers, scientists, physicians—in short, a diverse variety of English men and women who spent several years in India, or sometimes merely passed through it. The imperial archive on India—supposedly one of the largest in the world—has been examined by postcolonial scholars for its discursive constitutions of exploration and discovery, administrative control and authority, the civilizational mission, militarism, and the everyday-ness of (English) life in India, among others. The archive, which begins with letters written by factors (as the representatives of the East India Company were called), traders, and officers of the English East India Company, and which also includes a number of literary and cultural texts that emerge from the late 18th century, has provided the foundations for the extensive postcolonial scrutiny of English representations of India, inspired in part by Said 1994 (cited under English “Writing” of India). The unpacking of the imperial archive—the English representations of India—takes the form of specific studies, such as the botanical-zoological surveys of India by collectors and scientists, colonial ethnography-anthropology texts on the Indian peoples, translations and analysis of Indian languages and literary texts by translators and linguistics, the biomedical tracts that mapped a landscape of disease, or the reformer’s altruistic-authoritarian commentary on India’s perceived barbarism, to name a few domains in English colonial writings on India. Colonial discourse studies, to which this bibliography provides a short entry point, is as diverse as the representations it scrutinizes, and the texts inventoried here demonstrate how colonial discourse not only described the “object” (India), but actively, materially, constructed it in significant ways that enabled multiple imperial purposes and functions: exploration, documentation, “improvement,” and control.

scholarly journals Politik dan Ekonomi Terengganu pada Hujung Abad Ke-18: Kajian terhadap Warkah Sultan Mansur Shah I

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-298
Author(s):  
Abd Ur-Rahman Mohamed Amin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Relations ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Diplomatic Relations ◽  
Trade Relations ◽  
Late 18Th Century ◽  
Reference Number ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

This article discusses the contents of 17 letters from Sultan Mansur Shah I, the Sultan of Terengganu, are preserved in the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London with the reference number SOAS MS 40320. Written in Malay using Arabic script, these were sent between 1785 and 1794. The contents discuss the political history of Terengganu involving foreign relations with the Siamese and the British. The Siamese were a continuous threat to Terengganu, especially after the Siamese conquest of Patani in 1785. Therefore, Terengganu sought to establish diplomatic relations with the British East India Company to protect it from the Siamese invasion. However, the attempt was unsuccessful due to the East India Company’s principle of non-involvement in Malay affairs. In terms of economy, Terengganu had trade links with Palembang, which supplied pepper and tin, as well as with ports in Java and Borneo. Terengganu also had trade relations with China and India. The Sultan of Terengganu employed a royal merchant, Saudagar Nasruddin, to manage his trade. British ships were used to carry pilgrims to Mecca through ports in Pulau Pinang and India. The letters also discuss the lineage of Sultan Mansur Shah I, which closely links him to the Johor and Patani sultanates. The entire contents of these letters have helped to provide more detailed information on the politics and economy of the Terengganu sultanate in the late 18th century.

Maulānā Raḥmat Allāh Kairānawī and Muslim-Christian Controversy in India in the Mid-19th Century

1976 ◽  
Vol 108 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-63
Author(s):  
A. A. Powell
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
North India ◽  
The North ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The People ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Muslim Culture ◽  
North Western

During the 1850's a prolonged encounter took place in the city of Agra between a Muslim ‘ālim, Maulānā Raḥmat Alläh Kairānawī, and a German evangelical missionary, the Reverend K. G. Pfander. The early Mughal emperors had developed Agra as the capital of their expanding empire, and even after the transfer of the court in 1648 to nearby Delhi, the city had retained some importance as a centre of Muslim culture and learning. But the period of the decline of the Mughal fortunes in the 18th century culminated in the capture of Agra in 1803 by the forces of the East India Company, and the next half-century saw the transformation of the city into a key administrative centre in the expansion of British control over north India. In 1836 Agra was made the headquarters of a new unit of administration—the North-Western Provinces. Hence the phase of active religious encounter which began shortly after that date should be examined in terms of the impact which British rule, Western culture, and the Christian religion had effected on the people of the province since its annexation. Indeed in the eyes of missionary as well as ‘ālim, the generating force behind the new confrontation was a fear that the beginning of Christian preaching activity in Agra was a threat to the hold of Islam on the uneducated Muslims of the city and the surrounding region.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document