The many faces of baltasar da costa: Imitatio and accommodatio in the seventeenth century madurai mission

Author's Department

History Department

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https://doi.org/10.4000/etnografica.3376

Document Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Etnografica

Publication Date

1-1-2014

doi

10.4000/etnografica.3376

Abstract

The Jesuit Baltasar da Costa devoted his life to the Madurai mission in seventeenth century Tamil Nadu during the rule of the Na- yaka kings. He was the first Christian missionary to style himself as a pan. t. a - ram, a Śaiva priest to the lower castes. This paper will argue that his mimetic practice can best be appreciated if read bi-directionally, through the language of European humanism and religious thought, as well as through the new symbolic codes of Na- yaka political order. The article also considers the limits of Costa's mimetic practice in terms of its success as an evangelical strategy and in the extent to which it was ultimately predicated upon the maintenance of alterity and not the dissolution of difference. © CRIA.

First Page

135

Last Page

158

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