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Sangath, www.sangath.com, is looking to build a centre for services, training and research and seeks to buy approx 1500 to 2000 sq mtrs land betweeen Mapusa and Bambolim and surrounding rural areas. Please contact: [email protected] or [email protected] or ph+91-9881499458 http://lists.goanet.org/pipermail/goanet-goanet.org/2009-July/180028.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2009/8/3 Santosh Helekar <[email protected]>: > This continued smearing of the historian Priolkar > by the freelance journalist Noronha becomes > more and more curious by each passing day.... You're missing the point about Buchanan's bias, and the question of how Anant Kakba Priolkar could rely on part of the bigoted views of a man like this. He seems to be having a problem with every aspect of belief and practise which doesn't belong to his tradition. Please see Was Hinduism invented? by Brian Kemble Pennington (page 90 ff): Buchanan assured his readers that the outrageous excesses of Hindu worship, as he described it, accurately reflected the moral life of most Hindus as well. These were not the benign and mild people many travellers had suggested. Recounting his initial reaction to the rites at Jagannatha, he wrote: This, I thought, is the worship of the Brahmins of Hindostan, and their worship in its sublimest degree ... Two of Buchanan's other encounters on his tour are worthy of notice, for they underscore his passionate antipathy towards religious practice he saw transfixed by flesh and matter. He investigated the state of native Syrian Christian communities along the southwestern coast of India who traced their lineage to the legendary first-century visit by Jesus' own apostle, Thomas. When the Portuguese had attempted to force their submission to Papal authority in the sixteenth century, many "Malabar Syrians" had fled from the coast into the hills, and the English had heard only rumours of them since their arrival. Buchanan set out to discover if they still existed and in what state their religion had survived. He found the people and the churches to exude an "air of fallen greatness", which the Christians told him reflected their suppression by the Inquisition at Goa. They had preserved the ancient Syriac liturgy and some copies of the Syriac scriptures, one of which the bishop presented to Buchana who then deposited it in the University Library at Cambridge, where it still lies. The simplicity and purity of Malabar Christian doctrine impressed Buchanan. He entertained the hope that this ancient gem, preserved amidst Hindu, Muslim and Roman persecution, might united with the Church of England, for its people possessed "the two chief requisites for junction with any pure church; namely, they profess the doctrines of the Bible, and reject the supremacy of the Pope." Still, he thought elements of Syrian Christian practice in need of reform, including the Eucharist, clerical celibacy, and worship practices reminiscent of Roman Catholicism. On his return to England, Buchanan proposed to the Church Missionary Society that it take up the cause of the Syrian churches. The CMS eagerly pursued the project, hoping to reform the Syrian doctrine and worship so the ancient church could shine as a beacon of native Christian piety in a pagan land. Buchanan expressed hope that an alliance between this church and the Established Church of England would help stem "the immense power of the Romish Church in India," but the working union that was established in 1816 unravelled within 20 years, primarily because Buchanan "gravely underestimated the differences which in fact existed between the Church of England and the Thomas Christians.".... Buchanan likewise visited the sizable Roman Catholic population in the south. Although he had expected to find them in an unsatisfactory condition, he "certainly did not expect to see Christianity in the degraded state in whcih he found it." He charged that the priests, "better acquainted with the Veda of Brahma than with the Gospel of Christ," superintended a paganized Christianity.... Buchanan arrived in the city of New Goa (?) in January of 1808 and, without revealing his intentions, accepted an invitation from a priest, Josephus a Doloribus, later revealed as the second member of the Inquisitional Tribunal, to stay in his apartments on the understanding that Buchanan was surveying the libraries in Goa. Buchanan spent a few days in urbane Latin conversation with the priest, who treated him very cordially and engaged him in a friendly theological debate. In this polite atmosphere, Buchanan casually broached the subject of the ongoing Inquisition, showing Doloribus a copy of French traveler Charles Dellon's *Relation de l'inquisition de Goa* (1687), a firsthand account of his own imprisonment there. The Inquisitor was anxious to know whether such damning tales of Catholicism in Goa were well-known in Europe, and as the popularity of Inquisitional literature was undiminished in the nineteenth century, Buchanan confirmed his fears. Buchanan then pushed the priest further to know whether prisoners still suffered such tortures and how many might be kept in the dungeons beneath them. The priest balked at answering these increasingly pointed questions, declaring the conditions and punishment of the prisoners 'sacrum et secretum.' At this point, Buchanan's tactics changed. Previously, he had attempted to ingratiate himself with the priest, expressing common interests and giving no indication that he knew of or objected to teh INquisition. He later told David Brown, Company chaplain and his superior at Fort William College, "I disguised my purpose for the first three days.... so that, on the fourth day, I attacked him directly on the present state of the Inquisition."... The comments of the essay in Wagle and Coelho's (U. of Toronto) book of collected essay, on Buchanan, are more insightful...
