Europeans. Their chief and lasting enemy was the local Governor Hassius who was to give them endless trouble. Hassius feared that unpleasant situations would crop up if the missionaries started to work among non-Christians. He feared economic disaster. As fate would have it, a young local called Mudaliappa who spoke a little Portuguese offered his services to the missionaries. It is important to know that no European in the town had taken the trouble to learn Tamil. On the suggestion of Paulsen the missionaries began to learn Portuguese which had hitherto been the means of communication betwixt the locals and the Europeans. Half the European population were fellowmen. In times of financial crisis, the German soldiers helped the missionaries.

If their work had to make progress, the missionaries had to learn Tamil. If Ziegenbalg should attract the non-Christians into the Christian fold, the local tongue had to be learnt. To learn Tamil was not an easy task. Their initial difficulty lay in finding a person, who knew Tamil and also some language known to them. He could become their teacher. Several months passed without success. Then they found a Malabar school master and they invited, this 70 year-old Hindu teacher into their house with his little school. The missionaries were anxious to know how the children were taught and to make their acquaintance with the young people and to learn what they could, for this purpose they were not ashamed of becoming pupils of the Hindu school master. They sat amidst the young and astonished Tamil students and like them sat on the sand and soon were “writing the artistic, complicated and beautifully formed Tamil letters.” ³⁷ The missionaries soon learnt to read, write and pronounce but there was an almost insurmountable obstacle, the aged teacher was unable to translate the words into Portuguese and hence the missionaries were not able to comprehend the meaning of the Tamil words. But help was soon to come. The Missionaries learnt that an Indian translator called Aleppa whose mother-tongue was Tamil knew and understood Portuguese, Danish, German and Dutch. He was persuaded by Ziegenbalg and his

37. S. G. Lang and H. W. G. op. cit. P. 25.