Tamil is the first Indian language to appear in print – both in Roman transliteration and in its own script. It is also the first non-European language to appear in Print. This historic event has a back story, rooted in the Portuguese entry into India, colonial trade wars and the dedicated effort of one man.
In 1547, a twenty-seven-year-old man landed on the shores of the Fishery coast – a stretch of land extending north from Kanyakumari to the Coromandel. His name was Henri Henriques (Anrique Anriquez), a Portuguese Jew who became a Jesuit missionary.
After completing his education at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, he set sail for India, inspired by the work of St Francis Xavier, a Jesuit priest. From then till his death in 1600, Henri lived and worked in India as a Jesuit missionary.
But Henri’s place in the annals of history comes from the legacy he established in Tamil print and the repository of books he left behind. In his lifetime, Henri produced five different books, printed in Tamil script and language, and is now regarded as the ‘the first great European scholar of any Indian language.’
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