A Tamil Pietist in Ceylon: The Educational Experiments of Christian David

Abstract

This microhistory of the early nineteenth-century school-building efforts of a Tamil preacher in British Ceylon tracks an intersection between missionary education, British colonialism, and South Asian modernity. Christian David (1771–1852) was born into a Tamil Christian family with deep connections to the Royal Danish-Halle Mission at Tranquebar and educated by German missionaries Christian Friedrich Schwartz and Christoph Samuel John, like his more famous contemporaries King Serfoji ii of Tanjore and the celebrated Christian poet Vētanāyakam Cāstiriyār. In the year 1801, after declining employment in Serfoji’s court, David accepted an offer to become ‘Preacher in the Malabar Language in the District of Jafnapatam’. Drawing upon his extensive, albeit little-known writings, this essay argues that David expanded upon the mixed Tamil-German education of his childhood and the pedagogical experimentation of his missionary mentors to propose and construct a pioneering and consequential state-funded boarding school explicitly seeking to cultivate governable subjects.