Philip Baldaeus

Philippus Baldaeus (born October 24, 1632 in Delft , † between August 15 and September 27, 1671 in Geervliet , south of Rotterdam ) was a Dutch Reformed clergyman, writer, proto- Indologist and ethnologist . The name is Latinized from Philips Baelde or Balde .

Philippus Baldaeus, in 1671

life and work

School and study

His father was Jan Baelde, a merchant, his mother's name was Maria de Jonge (Junius), his daughter Isaac Junius, a preacher in Delft. The couple married in 1629. Already at the age of four orphans, Baldaeus was raised by his grandfather and followed the example of his maternal uncle, Robert Junius , the "Reformer of Formosa " - the island, today's Taiwan was a Dutch colony from 1624 to 1662 - who from 1629 to 1643 at the He took part in the expedition and the costly battles with the Portuguese, Chinese and the natives of Formosa and wrote a detailed report on his return (1645). After attending grammar school in Delft and studying philosophy in Groningen (1649) and theology in Leiden (1650–1654), Baldaeus also became a Calvinist preacher.

East India Company preacher in Southeast Asia

After completing his studies, he acquired Malay and Formosan skills (probably a Hakka dialect) in Leiden and successfully applied for a preaching position with the United East India Company , the VOC The Struggle for Supremacy over the Spice Regions of the South and South Southeast Asia between Portugal and the Netherlands was in full swing when Baldaeus - meanwhile married - traveled to Batavia , today's Jakarta , as a preacher in 1654 , the seat of the governor general and headquarters of the society, where he arrived in 1655.

His knowledge of Malay led him to Makassar on a diplomatic mission . Immediately after the capture of Colombo / Sri Lanka (then Ceylon ), however, he was - against his intention - transferred to the island of Sri Lanka newly conquered by the Portuguese. After a stopover in Malacca , he stayed first in Galle , then in Colombo and Jaffna , although he had prepared for a deployment in Formosa. His complaint was unsuccessful and his knowledge of Malay and Formosan had become worthless. After his first wife died in Batavia, which was considered the “grave of the Europeans” because of its unhealthy situation, he married for the second time on board the ship that brought him to Ceylon in 1656.

Missionary and ethnologist in South India and Sri Lanka

Baldaeus had to look after the Dutch Reformed community in Ceylon as well as the local, formerly Catholic Christians, to whom he had to familiarize himself with the new faith. In the ranks of soldiers in the service of the VOC there were also numerous Lutherans, especially Germans, who were viewed by the pastors as rivals in faith and were often sharply attacked in sermons, and a. Johann Jacob Saar ; He was also responsible for pastoral care for this group. As a field preacher, he accompanied the Dutch general Rijklof van Goens on his campaign against the Portuguese (1658), which ended with the capture of Jaffna and Mannar in Sri Lanka and Tuticorin and Nagapattinam in southern India. The mountainous inland of Sri Lanka with the Tamil Buddhist Kingdom of Kandy , on the other hand, remained independent until the English conquest in 1796, was cut off from the sea and completely isolated. It remained a constant thorn in the flesh of the Dutch possessions.

Baldaeus stayed in Nagapattinam, the company's headquarters on the mainland, for over a year; We are informed about the everyday life and the leisurely course of business that prevailed on the Coromandel coast through a letter from his hand to a young candidate at home. Baldaeus was also involved in Goens' successful campaign against the remaining Portuguese possessions on the south Indian Malabar coast - Quilon 1661, Cochin and Cranganore 1662. Van Goens seems to have been satisfied with his administration, because he entrusted him with his son for education from 1659 to 1660. Further business and mission trips took him to Cannanur / Kannur and to the King of Perkatti .

The whirling of the milk sea by gods and asuras in Baldaeus' "idolatry"

Baldaeus' parish encompassed the entire coastal area of ​​Sri Lanka including the offshore islands and the Tamil southern tip of India, an area that had been divided by the Portuguese into 32 parishes, each with a church and a school and looked after by numerous friars and a Jesuit college. When the Portuguese withdrew from Jaffna alone, there were still 40 to 50 clergy among the survivors, despite previous losses. For only four preachers this was a Herculean task; while the Catholic Jesuit mission in Madura on the Indian mainland could fall back on lifelong active friars ( Francisco de Xavier , Roberto de Nobili , Joseph Constant Beschi , Johannes de Britto ), who did not have to take any family into consideration and the Baldaeus because of their commitment and their knowledge - seldom at this time - highly valued and studied their scriptures and methods, he had to travel alone from church to church and "rename" the local Catholics - in 1663 alone there were 12,387 people. Education was also important to him because, to his chagrin, he found the local people's religious education very superficial. Many were mere “name” or so-called “rice Christians” (according to the quantity of rice they received for their conversion).

Philippus Baldaeus
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Link to the picture
(Please note copyrights )

A double portrait in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam , which was only identified in 1999, shows the young missionary in local costume with his Tamil interpreter in a tropical landscape with his Sinhalese parish church in the background.

Baldaeus was primarily interested in understanding the culture and religion of the Sinhalese and South Indians in order to be able to do missionary work, but he also advocated better schooling for the locals; on his departure there were 18,000 school children. With his zeal, however, he came into conflict with the company, which shied away from additional expenses and was indifferent to the church and school care of the locals. In any case, in her domain she also claimed suzerainty over church issues ("gewinzucht over godsvrucht", "profitability over fear of God"); In addition, the hope that the Collegium Indicum established by the VOC in Leiden would grow up particularly willing missionaries was deceived: "We have more annoyance with these young Fanten than with other preachers and subordinates," complained a governor-general. The preachers, for their part, had to overlook all kinds of grievances - drunkenness, corruption, lax morals, slave trade and husbandry, abuse of office and much more - and were also dependent on their church superiors in Batavia, who could relocate them at any time in the event of complaints from the authorities.

For a long time afterwards, his pastoral work in Ceylon was classified as exemplary by his colleagues.

Return to the Netherlands

Cover picture of the German edition

From 1665 to 1666 Baldaeus returned to the Netherlands via the Cape of Good Hope ; apparently in 1654 he had committed himself to ten years of service abroad. In 1667 he expressed his complaints about church affairs in Ceylon in a petition to the government in The Hague . Instead of a position at the Collegium Indicum , he had to be content as a preacher in the small community of Geervliet south of Rotterdam since 1669 . Here he completed his description of the East Indian coasts of Malabar and Coromandel ( Amsterdam 1672). He died in the year of publication, only 39 years old.

The True Description

He wrote his main work soon after returning to the Netherlands. In addition to detailed descriptions of religion, mythology, customs and traditions of South India and Sri Lanka, it contains numerous, detailed and carefully executed copperplate engravings and was translated into German that same year.

structure

The book is divided into the following sections:

• "Detailed description of the East Indian coasts or Ansee areas of Malabar and Coromandel" (contains: "Kurtze instructions for the Malabar language art")
• "Description of the large and famous island of Zeylon"
• "Idolatry of the East Indian Heyden. This is a true and detailed negotiation of the worship of the Indostan, Coromandel, Malabar and Zeylon Heyden, how the same idols are depicted and honored."

content

From an ethnological, historical, geographical and theological point of view, Baldaeus recorded everything that he himself or from sources (e.g. a baptized Brahmin), from interpreters, from the holdings of the Jesuit libraries in Ceylon and South India and later from the literature accessible in the Netherlands about this part of South Asia . He benefited from his knowledge of Sanskrit and Portuguese , which is widely used as the lingua franca ; he also quoted in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French and Italian. His description of the Tamil language was groundbreaking for all its shortcomings, even if, according to his own statement, he only had a basic knowledge of it (“he probably didn't know much more than the alphabet”), quite different from the Jesuits, who were so proficient in Tamil that they did even shamed the Brahmins at language competitions with their language skills.

Baldaeus' book shaped the ideas that people in Europe had of Hinduism and Buddhism . He was the first to convey the main content of the Krishna mythology and the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata to a larger audience.

The portrait from 1671

The title copper engraving of his work from 1671 shows him in a half-portrait as a friendly, in the prime of his years and - in the year before his death - obviously healthy man with loose hair in the style of Louis XIII. (i.e. without a wig) in the predicant habit of time, d. H. in a black skirt buttoned at the front with a beffchen (two-part white collar) and a black pileolus as well as the Latin-Dutch signature:

• PHILIPPUS BALDAEUS DELPHENSIS VDM
  PRIMO ANNUM IN PUNTE GALE, POSTEA
  IN REGNO JAFFNAPATNAM IN INSULA CEY =
  LON 8 Annos, Iam in Geervliet 2. AEtatis 38. A.1671.
  This is Baldaeus self, the Blind Heydendom
  Door Leven en door Leer brings dead the Christendom .
• Philipp Baldaeus from Delft, preacher
  He was first in Galle for a year , then
  8 years in the Kingdom of Jaffna on the island of Cey =
  lon; [he] has been in Geervliet for 2 years, 38 years old, in 1671.
  This is Baldeau himself, who brought blind paganism
  to Christianity through [his] life and teaching .

Remarks

1. ↑ DTB Delft inv. 55, folio 119
2. ↑ Biographical information from Jong, Afgoderye, pp. XXXIX – LV.
3. ↑ The relationship to Baldaeus is not entirely certain, but Baldaeus' mother was born Junius, and Baldaeus lived in Amsterdam in the house of the preacher Robertus Junius.
4. ↑ In the kingdom of Kandy, which is almost completely closed off by the jungle and high mountains, the shipwrecked Briton Robert Knox lived as a prisoner for almost twenty years (1659–1678) ; after an adventurous escape his memories in 1681 appeared in England, his adventures are reflected partly in the Robinson Crusoe of Daniel Defoe resist.
5. ↑ Peters, In steen geschreven, pp. 51-64. A century later, the German-Dutchman Jacob Haafner (1769–1809) gives a vivid picture of the areas Baldaeus visited in his biography.
6. ↑ At that time, hiding and sheltering a Catholic priest was punishable by the death penalty for locals.
7. ↑ Mieke Beumer 1999
8. ↑ Stevens, VOC p. 77
9. ↑ Jong, Afgoderey p. XXXIX
10. ↑ Jong, Afgoderey, p. LXXIII
11. ^ Eg Beschi, who astonished the Brahmins of the Sangam Academy with his knowledge of classical Tamil; Abbé Jean Antoine Dubois : Life and Rites of the Indians. Caste system and Hindu belief in South India around 1800. Reise Know-How, Bielefeld 2002. S. 582 Note 660
12. ↑ A small cap that covers the back of the head and ears.
13. ^ VDM = Verbi Divini Minister , d. H. Herald of the Divine Word
14. ↑ Galle, fortress and port city in the south of Sri Lanka

Works

• Naauwkeurige Beschrijvinge van Malabar en Choromandel, the individual adjoining ryken, en het mightige eyland Ceylon nevens een ... ontdekking en neitherlegginge van de afgoderye the East-Indian heydenen . van Waasberge and van Someren, Amsterdam 1672
• Truly detailed description of the famous East Indian coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, as well as the island of Zeylon including the embracing and subordinate empires ... Throughout decorated with new maps and images ... In addition to a complicated and thorough discovery of the idolatry of the East Indian Heyden , Malabaren, Benjanen, Gentiven, Bramines [et] c. ... Anitzo but translated from Dutch into Hochteutsche with diligence and provided with a complete register . Janssonius of Waesberge and Someren, Amsterdam 1672.
• Malabaar language art . 3 parts. Amsterdam 1672.

literature

• Marion Peters: Screeching in steen. Leven en sterven van VOC servants op de kust van Coromandel in India . Photos: Ferry André de la Porte. Amsterdam: Lubberhuizen 2002. - Study with black and white photos about everyday life in the Dutch branches in South India.
• Harm Stevens: De VOC in bedrijf 1602–1799 . Amsterdam: Walburg Pers 1999.
• Mieke Beumer: Philippus Baldaeus and Gerrit Mosopatam: een buitengewoon portret. In: Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 47 (1999), pp. 145-173. - About a double portrait of Baldaeus with his Tamil translator, with many biographical details.
• PCJ van den Krogt: Grandchildren of prominent Delftenaars in the VOC . In: Delft en de Oostindische Compagnie. Amsterdam 1987. pp. 193-196.
• JN Bakhuizen van den Brink: Baldaeus . In: Winkler Prins Encyclopedia . Volume 3, Amsterdam. Brussels 1948, p. 89.
• Albert Johannes de Jong: Afgoderye the East Indian Heydenen door Philippus Badlaeus opnieuw utgegeven en van inleiding en aantekeningen voorzien . At the same time Phil. Diss. Utrecht 1917.
• Johann Jacob Saar: Journey to Java, Banda, Ceylon and Persia 1644–1660. New hgb. according to the verb published by Johann Daniel Tauber (1672) at Nuremberg. Edition of the text published for the first time in 1662 . Haag: Martinus Nijhoff 1930 (SP L'Honoré Naber (Hgb.): Travel descriptions by German officials and soldiers in the service of the Dutch West and East Indian Companies 1602–1797 . 13 vols. Haag: Nijhoff 1930–1932. Here vol. 6) . - As a soldier in the service of the VOC, Saar was an eyewitness to the expulsion of the Portuguese by the Dutch; his detailed description of everyday life on the island has lost none of its vitality to this day. Saar returned home and fell fighting the Turks.

Web links

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