1 The existing literature on Beschi contains numerous errors and variations in dates, names and other information which appear to have been copied time and again without verification. In order to break that tradition, in this essay we only provide factual information that has been cross-checked with the available sources to the best of our ability. When we know of the existence of a particular source but were unable to consult it, we mention this explicitly, and we also make explicit any doubts regarding the information we gather from others without being able to further verify it.

2 Beschi was baptized a few days later, on 13 November 1680, and the baptismal certificate is the document containing the information on his birth date. The marriage certificate of Beschi’s parents is found in the Historical Archives of the Parish of Castiglione delle Stiviere, Matrimoni, vol. 3, ab anno 1625 ad 1662. Beschi’s baptismal certificate is in the same archives, Battesimi, vol. 7, ab anno 1667 ad 1683. The baptismal certificate records Beschi’s given name as “Costanzo Gioseffo Eusebio”, and this is the name we retain for the purposes of the present essay. In the sources we have used his name is mostly spelled as Costanzo Giuseppe Beschi, while he himself also signed as Constantius Joseph Beschi, adopting a partially Latinized form of his name. His godfather was Don Giulio Bosio; his godmother Honesta, wife of Sig. Diego Luigi Castellano. Some scholars have misread the name of Costanzo Beschi’s father, Gaudioso, as Gandolfo. The mistake might have originated in Besse 1918: 12.

3 There is no evidence to suggest that Gaudioso was a nobleman and a “count” (Graf) as stated in Gnanapragasam 1983: 8.

4 The town of Castiglione and the surrounding territory were ruled at the time by a branch of the Gonzaga family, subordinate to the signoria of the Gonzagas of Mantova. Saint Luigi Gonzaga (1568-1591) is certainly the most famous among the Gonzagas of Castiglione delle Stiviere. In 1729 he was declared the patron saint of young students.

5 The information relative to the Beschi family that can be gathered from the documents available in the archives of the Castiglione parish has been collected and summarized by Mr. Pietro Beschi in two documents available in loco: “Informazione sugli avi, i genitori, i fratelli, le sorelle e i nipoti del padre Costanzo Giuseppe Eusebio Beschi, ‘padre’ della lingua Tamil dell’India meridionale”; and “Albero genealogico del Padre Beschi”.

6 Giachi gives the German father’s (italianized) name as “Fedele Francesco von Oberhausen”. We have not been able to verify this information.

7 See Giachi 1981: 21, 77 n. 10. The information regarding the establishment and development of the Jesuit College in Castiglione can be found in the Archives of the Society of Jesus in Rome (ARSI), Ven. 71-76.

8 Emmanuelis Alvari e Societate Iesu De Institutione Grammatica libri tres, first printed in 1572. This Latin manual was widely adopted, and often reprinted in early modern Europe. The first Italian edition appeared in 1575 in Venice. On the method of the Alvares, but also on the reception and circulation of his grammar, see Springhetti 1961-2: 283-304.

9 Giachi 1981: 24-5 (for references to the documents preserved in ARSI, see also the detailed notes on pages 76-79). On the Jesuit colleges in Bologna and the education of the nobility, see Brizzi 1976.

10 Already the Jesuit historian Joseph Bertrand noted that the letters by Beschi and the annual letters covering the years 1720-1729 have been lost (Bertrand 1854: 357). In addition, Léon Besse noticed the lack of information regarding the years 1742-47, immediately before Beschi’s death in 1747 (Besse 1918: 165-66). While writing this essay, we were able to access the originals of the letters by Beschi preserved in the volumes Goa 20 and Goa 54 in ARSI, and his letter preserved among the correspondence of Étienne Fourmont (Bibliothèque nationale de France, NAF 6555, ff. 32-33). For the other documents relative to his life, we relied on the extensive excerpts in Bertrand 1854 and Besse 1918, translated into French or English respectively. At least Besse’s translations are based on the photostats of the original documents (held in ARSI) still preserved in the Archives of the Jesuit Madurai Mission in Shenbaganur, and are usually reasonably reliable. The letters cited in these works can be classified into two main genres: first, letters written by individual Jesuits about their own missionary experiences; second, so-called “annual letters” (litterae annuae), reports that every Jesuit mission had to send to the General of the Society of Jesus in Rome offering a comprehensive overview of the life of the mission during a certain year. In this essay, we also rely on the letters of the French missionaries working in the Carnatic mission, published in the collection Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses, insofar as some of them mention the work of Beschi in the Madurai mission. On reading, and counter-reading, Jesuit sources, see Županov 1999: 31-42.

11 The audacious form of Jesuit cultural adaptation, technically known as accommodatio, was introduced in South India by Roberto Nobili, who founded the Madurai mission in 1606. Nobili aspired to brahminical status, and was at the center of a group of converts and missionaries (called brahmin saṃnyāsis) who refrained from eating meat, performed smārta brahminical rites, etc. On Nobili, see Županov 1996, 1999, 2005; Aranha 2010. By the time Beschi joined the mission, however, Nobili’s project of brahminization of Christianity had already failed. The missionaries who decided to follow the practice of accommodatio adopted dress and habits similar to those of non-brahminical Śaivite teachers and priests known as paṇṭāram. Beschi did the same. This second form of accommodation was instituted already in the first half of the seventeenth century, under the supervision of Balthazar da Costa in Madurai. On da Costa, see Chakravarty 2012: 347-388.

12 The main object of controversy were the local rites adopted by missionaries in China and India, and their religious or cultural significance. Thus the debates are known in the literature as the Chinese and Malabar Rites controversies. On the Indian situation, see Aranha 2012. Beschi was not particularly active in this controversy, but his fellow missionary at Gurukkalpatti Antonio Broglia Brandolini was among the protagonists. Brandolini was the one who received Beschi’s profession of the four vows, as we read in Costanzo Beschi to General Michelangelo Tamburini (Kamanayakkanpatti, 12 January 1715), ARSI Goa 20, ff. 112r-113v.

13 On anti-Jesuit feelings in early modern Europe, see Fabre & Maire 2010. For an historical and historiographical overview on the suppression of the Society of Jesus, see Fabre 2014.

14 The village of Ambalakkadu was one of the early sites of Jesuit Printing. See Kesavan 1985: 13ff. In 1662 the Jesuits also founded a college in the village, which became an important missionary center. See Ferroli 1951: 286-298.

15 By the early eighteenth century, missionaries had produced many dictionaries and grammars for the study of Tamil. See Muru 2010.

16 According to Besse, this village no longer exists; the Kurukkalpatti now in the Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu is another location altogether. The Gurukkalpatti residence had posts in two villages that still exist: Kayatharu (Kayattāṟu) and Kamanaickenpatti (Kāmanāyakkaṉpaṭṭi). During his stay in the Gurukkalpatti residence, Beschi lived for some time in the village of Kamanayakkanpatti in 1715.

17 Brandolini’s account is translated both by Bertrand and by Besse, and both translations are made independently on the basis of the original Latin account. Besse 1918: 45-64. Bertrand 1854, 343-353. Beschi himself wrote about his incarceration on 21 December 1714 and his subsequent liberation thanks to the help of some friends, in a letter written to the General Michelangelo Tamburini (Kamanayakkanpatti, 12 January 1715), in ARSI, Goa 20, ff. 112r-113v. This letter does not contain any detail about the episode, but rather expresses Beschi’s regret for having missed the occasion to carry the “palm of martyrdom” (et summa, quam nunquam expertus sum, animi mei exultatione ad martyrii palmam proferebam). The longing for martyrdom, common among Jesuit missionaries at this time, has been studied by in Roscioni 2001.

18 Louis-Noël de Bourzes, Annual Letter of 1715, in Besse 1918: 66-67.

19 Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682-1919) and Heinrich Plütschau (1676-1747) first established a Lutheran pietist mission in 1706 in the Danish settlement of Tranquebar (Taraṅkampāṭi) on South India’s Eastern coast. The literature on the Lutheran mission is very extensive. For a recent overview see Gross, Kumaradoss & Liebau 2006. The competition between Catholics and Protestants is often noted in the letters of this period but has not been studied extensively. Catholics were particularly worried by the fact that the Protestants in Tranquebar had a printing press, and could therefore print and circulate their works easily and widely. See for example Jean Calmette to the Marquis de Coetlogon, Vice-Amiral de France (Ballabaram, 28 Septembre 1730), in Aimé-Martin 1841: 598-610; also the Appendix to this essay.

20 Beschi’s neologism Luttēriṉam could be read as either “Lutheranism” or “the Lutheran sect (iṉam)”.

21 For a chronological list of the editions of the works of Beschi, see the Appendix to this essay. In a letter to the General of the Society, Beschi noticed how Lutherans were paying catechists more than Catholics; and how that had to change. See Beschi to the Father General of the Society (Elakkuricci, 29 January 1731), ARSI, Goa 20, 184r. On the competition between Catholics and Protestants, the importance of the printing press (see previous footnote) and the role of the catechists in this competition, see Venkatachalapathy 2012: 213-225, and also Blackburn 2003: ch. 2.

22 João Vieyra, Annual Letter of 1730 (18 June 1731), in Besse 1918: 99-100.

23 “Cum vero hujus in disciplinæ studio ipse pluribus consumptis annis, non litteratus quidem, sed litterator videar, me tamulico gymnasio præficiunt.” Costanzo Beschi, Annual Letter of 1731 (4 September 1732), ARSI, Goa 54, ff. 597-602. Long excerpts of the Annual Letter of 1731, written by Beschi, were translated by Besse in his account of Beschi’s life (Besse 1918: 109-120). The passage regarding the Tamil school, however, is translated elsewhere, in the section where Besse discusses Beschi’s works (and specifically the grammar Clavis). Beschi’s production in these years, not only his grammars and dictionaries, but also his book of instructions for the catechists (Vētiyār oḻukkam), are coherent with the project of opening a school. During the same years, the Jesuit missionaries also begun to administer the Spiritual Exercises (a spiritual practice instituted by Ignatius of Loyola) to the catechists, as Beschi mentioned once again in the Annual Letter of 1731. On the Spiritual Exercises in the Madurai mission, see Besse 1910. The text of the Spiritual Excercises was translated into Tamil for the first time by Michele Bertoldi (1662-1740), with the title Ñāṉamuyaṟci. This work was eventually published in Pondicherry under Bertoldi’s Tamil name, Ñāṉappirakācacuvāmiyār, in 1843.

24 “Et hujus regionis scientiarum non ignarus, protracto in plures horas sermone, non nulla de naturā rerum, de sublimioris tamulicæ linguæ præceptis, de eorum poësi de Astrologia aliis que curiose percunctatus, […] avidissime perquirebat […] ac oblatum a me librum diu ipse perlegit. Erat autem liber cui nomen legis explicatio in quo tribus abhinc annis turpi Lutheranæ Sectæ origine paucis exposita, praecipua fidei nræ dogmata quæ per id tempus ab haereticis in controversiam vocantur, quâ potui diligentia explicare conatus fueram. […] quare cum et â me oblatum volumen papyro exaratum esset, exclamavit illicô se hujus modi libros ab arce Tramgambariæ missos habere: ad haec subridens ego, legas, dixi, et quanto â Trangambariensibus distrahamur intervallo, facile noveris.” Costanzo Beschi, Annual Letter of 1731 (4 September 1732), ARSI, Goa 54, ff. 597-602. An alternative translation can be found in Besse 1918: 109-120. In 1730 the French Jesuit Jean Calmette reported some bad news regarding the Madurai mission, regarding the persecutions against the missionaries in Tiruchirappalli perpetrated by an “homme du palais, modely de caste et substitut du dalavai et général des troupes”. Jean Calmette to the Marquis de Coetlogon (Ballabaram, 28 Septembre 1730), in Aimé-Martin 1841: 603. The episodes reported by Calmette and Beschi almost certainly refer to the same person, whose name we do not know. What we do know is that he was a court official, and adopted the caste title of mutaliyār, which Beschi used as the man’s personal name.

25 “Oruvarimuṭiyāmuṉṉē pārttakaṇṇum vēkavuccarittanāvun tuvarppakkēṭṭakātuṅ kaippamikkavum varuntutaṟ kāraṇamāka […].” Beschi 1868: 1-2. This is a trope Beschi used more than once, and a similar passage is contained in another anti-Protestant work written by Beschi, the Pētaka maṟuttal. See Blackburn 2003: 53.

26 Many of the available sources are included in Besse 1909.

27 This is Besse’s theory about the last years of Beschi, supported by Jesuit catalogues (Besse 1918: 168). Still, there is more than one village in Tamil Nadu claiming to be the location of Beschi’s tomb.

28 Muttusami Pillai 1840: 7-8. The same biography appeared first in the April 1840 issue of the Madras Journal of Literature and Science. See also below.

29 The anecdotes of Beschi as a controversial figure and his disputes with the Lutherans are discussed in Blackburn 2003: ch. 2.

30 Beschi 1822: vii-viii. With regard to the spiritual rewards of learning Tamil, Beschi wrote in the preface to his French-Tamil dictionary: “C’est un spectacle digne des anges et de dieu, de voir des hommes formés par l’age, par le savoir, par la vertû, redevenir enfans, balbutier avec une simplicité, qui paroit folie aux sages du siècle, mais qui est une sagesse toute divine […]”, BL OR 1308, f. 6v. This dictionary, although attributed to Beschi, might have been written with the help of one of the French missionaries who worked with him, like Fr. Memnius René Gargam (1689-1742).

31 Muttusami Pillai 1840: 10. The commentary that Muttusami Pillai attributes to Beschi himself has long been considered an auto-commentary, but Léon Besse rejected this interpretation and argued that the commentary must be a later addition (Besse 1918: 185-6). While reading the Tēmpāvaṇi, we noticed that the commentary sometimes fails to explain the text accurately; but this fact alone does not rule out the possibility of it being a (perhaps inadequate) self-commentary. We discuss the history of the manuscript of the Tēmpāvaṇi in the next section. The same year 1726 for the composition of the work is given in Bertrand 1854: 364.

32 A short version of this story is in Muttusami Pillai 1840: 10. A longer version is found in Dupuis 1851: 79. K. Meenakshisundaram also supported the idea of Beschi’s authorship. Meenakshisundaram 1974: 324-335.

33 Cupratīpakkavirāyar, a poet at the court of the ruler of Nilakkottai (Nilakkōṭṭai) in today’s Dindigul district, Nākama Kūḷappa Nāyakkaṉ, is remembered today for two poems he composed in honor of his patron: Kūḷappa nāyakkaṉ kātal and the Kūḷappa nāyakkaṉ viṟaliviṭutūtu (see the discussion of these works in Shulman 2001: 92-102). The story goes that when Cupratīpa became old and blind, his patron chased him away from the court, and he thus ended up working for Beschi. This version of Beschi’s works actually having been written by Cupratīpakkavirāyar is most emphatically put forward in Arunachalam 1974: 276-279.

34 Beschi’s Grammar of the High Dialect and his Clavis contain detailed descriptions of Tamil metres, verse forms, genre classifications, poetic themes and other poetological topics which correspond to the Tamil pāṭṭiyal grammars available in his time. A study of how Beschi dealt with and at times modified Tamil grammatical knowledge is presented in Chevillard 1992.

35 On the figure of Maria de Ágreda, her political role during the kingdom of Felipe IV, and her literary works, see Morte Acín 2010. She also sketches a history of the wide circulation of the Mystical City of God in Europe and America, and the way it influenced the “myth” of Ágreda (ibid.: 422-423).

36 On the difficult genesis, and controversial history of the Mystical City of God, see Cabibbo 2002. On the concern for the sources of experiential knowledge and spiritual experiences in the early modern period, and the discernment of the spirits, see Schreiner 2011: 261-322.

37 For further details on the literary convention of the avaiyaṭakkam see Ebeling 2010, especially ch. 2.

38 “Varuntiyanacaiyāṉāṉum varainta-vaivaraintukāṭṭat / tiruntiyatamiḻccollillāṟ cevippulaṉ kaippanallōr / poruntiyakuṟaika-ṇōkkiṟ puṇarntamaṭkalattaippārā / taruntiya-vamutunaṉṟē laruttiyōṭaruntalceyvār” (Beschi 1852: pāyiram v. 12). All further text quotations are from this edition, published in three volumes over three years.

39 “Malaiyiṉēraṟal maliyanāṟṟiṇaiyarunti-yapiṉ / ṉalaiyiṉēruṟalavaṉi taṉmakarkkelā-mūṭṭi / mulaiyiṉēruṟi viñcupālmuṭukalilu-ṭutta / kalaiyiṉēruṟik kaḷippoṭucintuvapōṉṟē” (v. 1.9).

40 A description of these poetic landscapes (tiṇai) is given in Beschi’s Clavis (Pars Tertia, §1): “Hic aintiṇai sunt quinque species, in quas terram omnem dividunt: kuṟiñci ager montanus, mullai pascualis et arboretis plenus, marutam irriguus, neytal maritimus, pālai arens, sine aqua, desertum”. In this verse he mentions only four out of these traditional five categories, since the fifth, pālai, is a wasteland sine aqua (without water).

41 On the relevance of this iconography in the early modern period, see Yalom 2007: 36-48; Ashton 2006: 83-101.

42 See the analogous moment in Ágreda 1902: vol. 2, 554-556. Beschi develops the events narrated in this short passage by Ágreda over two cantos (23-24).

43 “Aṇṭātaṉayāvaiyumaṇṭi yāyntāṉkaṇ-ṭāṉṟēvuruvum / paṇṭāyiṉatēvālayamum maṇippoṟṟēruntukaḷeṉṉak / kaṇṭāṉpalarōr-kaṭavuṭaṉaik karutivaṇaṅkakkaṇṭāṉkaṇ / ṭuṇṭāyiṉavōrkāraṇamu muṇarāteritīvīḻnta-yarntāṉ.” (v. 23.4, corr. 2b maṇippoṟ for paṇippoṟ).

44 Tasso 2009: 60. Throughout the canto, the similarities with the Tēmpāvaṇi appear more evident while reading the original Italian text rather than any of the archaic-sounding English translations available, among which we chose the most recent.

45 “Tirukimēṭamaruppīrēḻ ceṟiceñcaṭai-nīṭṭēḻcirattāṉ / parukiyeriyaikkālirattap parutittaṭittaviḻikkaṇṇā / ṉurukiyoḻuku-nañcumiḻmā lōṅkaṉeṭuṅkaittuṇṭattāṉ / perukiyaḻalōṭūṉpiḷirum piṟaikkūṉeyiṟṟu-vāyuruvāṉ.” (v 23.6, corr. 2b parutittaṭitta for parutittaṭatta).

46 On this technique, called maṭakku or yamakam (Skr. yamaka), see Ebeling 2010: 39-41. On the wider grammatical context for the early modern emphasis on this kind of figuration, see Shulman 2010 and Clare 2011.

47 We split the words as follows: “maṉavu aṇaṅku vaṇaṅku aṭi nāyakaṉ / maṉ av aṇaṅku vaṇaṅku il varuntiṉār / maṉa aṇaṅku vaṇaṅkal il āḷaṉum / maṉavu aṇaṅku vaṇaṅkum aṇaṅkumē”, i.e. somewhat differently from Vinson (1875: 65) who, less elegantly, ends up with an extra a as metrical filler (acaiccol) in line four.

48 Vinson 1875: 64. The increasing critique that not just verses like this but the pulavars’ poetry in general had to face during the course of the nineteenth century is detailed in Ebeling 2010.

49 “La poésie tamoule est en somme facile, et tout bon humaniste européen serait capable d’en faire autant que l’habile jésuite, si, comme lui, il s’initiait à la connaissance des vieux poèmes et à toutes les ressources de la langue” (Vinson 1875: 62). To prove his point with sober empiricism, Vinson takes himself as an example, arguing that after only one year of study, he was able to compose a Tamil poem that adhered perfectly to the Tamil taste: “Cela est si vrai qu’au bout d’un an seulement d’études, j’en étais arrivé, à Karikal, en 1861, à composer des strophes comme la suivante: […] Ce n’est pas fort, mais c’est tout à fait dans le goût tamoul” (ibid.).

50 “Der gelehrte Grammatiker und gewandte Apologet war aber zugleich auch ein wirklicher Dichter von Gottes Gnaden, der seine religiöse und poetische Begeiste-rung meisterhaft in den Formen und Farben des ihm ursprünglich fremden, später völlig eigenen Idioms zu äußern verstand” (Baumgartner 1897: 347). In his book, Baum-gartner provides quite a detailed discussion of the Tēmpāvaṇi (including a plot summary). The questions of what precisely may have been his sources for this and to what extent he could have read the Tamil original himself still require further research.

51 “Trotz der echt künstlerischen Anord-nung und Durchführung des bedeutsamen Stoffes würde eine wörtliche Uebersetzung der Dichtung in eine moderne europäische Sprache wohl nahezu ungenießbar ausfallen, weil Beschi sich in Bezug auf Sprache, Ausdruck und poetischen Schmuck völlig dem indischen Geschmack angepaßt, ja diesen Theil der Ausführung von vornherein ganz indisch gedacht hat. Denn er hatte sich so in die Formen des„ Chintâmani” und des Tamil-„ Rāmāyana” wie der übrigen Tamil-Poesie hineingelebt, daß er damit spielte. Der Schwächen dieser Poesie und ihrer Poetik war er sich wohl bewußt; aber ihm war es nicht darum zu thun, sein indisches Publikum durch abendländische Formen zu einem europäischen Kunstge-schmack heranzubilden: er wollte es lediglich durch seine Gewandtheit in den ein heimischen Kunstformen für die Ideen des Christenthums gewinnen” (Baumgartner 1897: 350).

52 Hough 1824: 143f. Original emphasis. A similar misunderstanding was expressed by the Wesleyan Methodist missionary Elijah Hoole (1798-1872): “[The Tēmpāvaṇi] was intended to supply the place of a translation of the holy Scriptures; but every doctrine, fact, and superadded legend is so accommodated to the notions and circumstances of the Hindoos, that the whole might be supposed to have been the composition of a native, who had never set his foot beyond the boundaries of his own country” (Hoole 1844: 202).

53 The literature on the Council of Trent, and the translation of the Bible in early modern Europe, is too vast to be summarized in one footnote. An excellent analysis is Fragnito 1997.

54 A short biography of Babington is Payne 2004.

55 On the Tamil pulavars at the College of Fort St. George, see Ebeling 2009 and Venkatachalapathy 2009.

56 We have not yet been able to identify this poet with any certainty.

57 The manuscript is today preserved in the British Library as BL Mss. Tam. B. 3. The volume is bound together with some of Walter Elliot’s letters concerning the way Elliot acquired the manuscript. These letters are the sources for the discussion to follow.

58 In the words of Elliot, “a Chrutran from Tanjore”. It is probable that Thambisami was a member of the Vēḷālar caste, a landowning community of Tamil Nadu considered to belong to the śudra caste.

59 On Vētanāyakam Cāstiriyār, see Peterson 2002 and 2004.

60 Trento’s dissertation focuses on the history of the Catholic literature produced within the context of the Madurai mission in the eighteenth century (including Beschi’s works), and addresses issues of circulation and reception of that literature at the turn of the century.

61 On Ariel’s manuscript collection, see Rosny 1866.

62 Rosny 1866: 180-1. For the editions of Beschi’s grammars, see the Appendix.

63 Now catalogued as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF), Ms. Indien 204. This manuscript, on palm leaves, includes four grammatical works, of which Beschi’s Toṉṉul Viḷakkam is the first.

64 This translation is now in the BNF as Ms Indien 191. The title of the manuscript is Grammaire tamoul ou malabar. Traduction de la grammaire latine-tamoule de Beschi. This translation begins directly with the first chapter of the grammar, skipping over the introduction.

65 BNF, Ms. Indien 474-475. The text of this manuscript is basically identical with the London copy of the Tēmpāvaṇi. Interestingly, a French reader marked the second volume of this manuscript with some dates, probably to mark the place up to which he had read (see for example Indien 475 f. 197v, marked “Le 27 mai 1841”). This reader could not have been Ariel, since he was not yet in Pondicherry in 1841.

66 “Dieu veuille qu’en charmant le lecteur par la beauté de sa poésie, et des faits qu’il dépeint, ce poème procure au lecteur l’intelligence de la vraie religion et le salut éternel, but principal que, sans contredit, l’auteur et l’éditeur ont eu, en entreprenant un si grand travail.” Dupuis 1851: 181.

67 We are grateful for Hartmut Bobzin’s meticulous reconstruction of Rückert’s borrowing habits based on the library lending registers, and for the detailed information on Rückert’s use of Tamil materials provided in the exhibition catalog (Bobzin 1988). See also Bobzin 2010. Ebeling is currently preparing a detailed study of Rückert as a scholar of Tamil.

68 The other student, Heinrich August Eduard Meyer (1813-1862), was sent to Australia instead.

69 “Beschi aber leistete in grammatischer und lexikalischer Beziehung in der That Vorzügliches; seine für den europäischen Gebrauch in lateinischer Sprache verfaßte Grammatik des Hochtamulischen hat seitdem noch nicht einmal eine Neben-buhlerin, wohl aber einen englischen Uebersetzer gefunden.” (Beschi did an outstanding job regarding grammar and lexicography; his grammar of High Tamil written in Latin for the use of Europeans has not yet found a rival, but an English translator) (Graul 1856: 306).

70 “Le P. Beschi a joué un rôle fort important dans l’histoire des études tamoules, mais ce rôle a été singulièrement exagéré. Ses ouvrages d’enseignement, supérieurs à tous ceux qui ont été faits jusqu’à ces dernières années, resteront et lui conserveront une réputation honorable; ses ouvrages tamouls, en prose ou en vers, n’ont qu’un intérêt fort secondaire et leur célébrité ne dépassera jamais le cercle étroit des chrétiens du pays tamoul” (Vinson 1899: 123). Already in 1875 in his first essay on Beschi, Vinson had been skeptical: “Comme versification, je n’aurai que des éloges à donner à Beschi, si l’on n’avait vraiment abusé à son égard des épithètes admiratives” (Vinson 1875: 62).

71 Testimonies in praise of his recitations are included in Savarayalounaiker 1869.