What I admire most in them, leaving aside the excellence of the matter, the arrangement and order of the subjects, is the fact that he composed them all after becoming blind.
spirituality
More on Robert de Nobili:
He encouraged converts to retain their caste and other traditional practices. De Nobili said of the Christian faith that
the law which I preach is the law of the true God, which from ancient times was by his command proclaimed in these countries by sannyasis and saints.
Despite constant opposition from local Christians, his appeal to Rome for support was upheld.
Although his work was not followed up, de Nobili left a double legacy that was taken up again in the twentieth century. He acquired a thorough knowledge of Vedanta and a few Catholic scholars have followed this example and made a thorough study of Indian religions.
Born at Montepulciano, Tuscany, September, 1577; died at Mylapore, India, in 1656. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1597, at Naples, and after a brilliant course of studies sailed for the Indian mission in October, 1604, arriving at Goa, 20 May, 1605. After a short stay at Cochin and the Fishery Coast, he was sent in November, 1606, to Madura to study Tamil. Within a year he had acquired a complete mastery of Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit. In his zeal to convert the Brahmins he adopted their mode of life and so had to cut himself off completely from intercourse with his fellow missionaries. He worked in Madura, Mysore, and the Karnatic till old age and almost complete blindness compelled him to retire to Mylapore....De' Nobili translated into Sanskrit or composed therein many prayers and several longer works, especially an abridgment of Christian Doctrine and a life of Our Lady, in Sanskrit verse. Nearly all these productions were lost during his imprisonment in Madura (1639-41). His principal work in Tamil is his "Larger Catechism", in four books, printed after his death (partly reprinted, Trichinopoly, 1891-1906). It is a course of theology adapted to the needs of the country. In addition he wrote: "A Treatise on the Eternal Life", "A Dialogue on the Faith", "A Disproof of Transmigration", "A Manual of Rules of Perfection", numerous hymns and several instructions not yet edited, two small catechisms still in actual use, "The Science of the Soul", and many prayers. He translated into Telugu several of his Tamil works, among them the two small catechisms. In Tamil and Telugu he enriched the vocabulary with appropriate Christian terms.
Robert de Nobili was the first European Sanskrit scholar. Max Mueller, the erudite German Indologist, describes the learning of de Nobili in the following words:
A man who could quote from Manu, from the Puranas, nay from the works such as the Apastamba Sutras, which are known even at present only to those few Sanskrit scholars who can read Sanskrit manuscripts, must have been far advanced in the knowledge of the sacred language and the literature of the Brahmins.
De Nobili was also one of the pioneers in the writing of Tamil prose. He enriched Tamil with many words and phrases adapted from Sanskrit. His works include Athuma Nirunayam (The Science of the Soul), Gnana Upathesa Kandam (A kind of Summa Theological in four volumes), and Thushana Thikkaram (Refutation of Calumnies). In all twenty-one books, besides numerous other writings are the fruit of his scholarly endeavours. These had a great influence on the educated classes of India. Regarding his learned works, Fr. De Proenca remarks:
What I admire most in them, leaving aside the excellence of the matter, the arrangement and order of the subjects, is the fact that he composed them all after becoming blind.