300 Year Old Sanskrit Work Released in Germany

April 27, 2013 (VNN) via Times of India

A Sanskrit grammar written by German born grammarian, lexicographer and philologist Jesuit missionary Fr Johann Ernst Hanxleden, popularly known as Arnos Padre, was released in Belgium.

The over 300-year-old work, considered one of the earliest missionary grammars in Sanskrit, was released on April 10, Fr Roy Thottathil SJ, Director of Arnos Padre Academy here, said.

He told PTI that he received an official communication in this regard from Prof Christphe Vielle and Prof Toon Van Hal of the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium., editors and publisher of the book.

The 88-page manuscript of ‘Grammatica Grandonica’ was found missing for over three centuries and it was recovered last year by Hal from a Carmelite monastery’s library in Montecompatri (Rome), Thottathil said.

Born at Ostercappeln near Osnabruck in Hanover, Germany, Hanxleden arrived in India on December 13, 1700, as a Jesuit missionary.

He built the Saint Francis Xavier’s church at Velur near here in 1712 and spent his remaining days there.

The two Professors had visited the church in January last year and other places related to the activities of Hanxleden, John Kalliath, Secretary of the Arnos Padre Research Institute told PTI.

The church and the building were declared as protected monuments by the Kerala government in 1994.

Proficient in German, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Latin, Syriac, Portuguese and Tamil, Hanxleden compiled Malayalam-Portuguese and Sanskrit-Portuguese dictionaries.

He mastered Sanskrit when even learning it was taboo for non-Brahmins and wrote several essays in Latin based on Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

Hanxleden, who died of a snake bite at Pazhuvil near here in March 1732, made efforts to spread among European scholars and thinkers about India’s cultural heritage and importance of Sanskrit.