Mapping Histories (South Asian Studies Series) Book

I bought this book by mistake, as I had intended to buy the "scholarly" one by Frykenberg. I was wanting to learn more about the Saint Thomas Christians in Southern India and Frykenberg's book s mentioned in a lot of other books. I guess I ordered the wrong book-- but what a happy surprise! Written and published in India both authors are "insiders" and scholars. I was really interested hearing their explanations of basic Christian concepts vis-a-vis cultural Hindu concepts; as well as reading the numbers in so many lakhs and so much water flowing into the Ganges...It was so well written and engaging that I went beyond the beginning (the part about the Saint Thomas Christians) and read the entire book in just a few sittings. Interesting too to read about the "second flowering" of Christianity in India brought by the Portuguese. The authors did a fantastic job describing how horribly the Portuguese handled (what else is new?) arriving on Indian shores in search of spices and souls only to already find Christians in India--and by the way, those Christians had a much more venerable lineage than the Portuguese hustlers. Just as they did later in Ethiopia, they decried them heretics and harassed them. There was also a wonderful treatment of a Jesuit missionary named de Nibili. Reminiscent of Ricci in China, de Nobili engaged in a very interesting form of missionary activities (basically, he went native, learned the language fluently and appealed to the locals from within their cultural context). He was slapped by the Inquisition (that was not discussed in this book, unfortunately) and the case went all the way to cardinal Bellarmino of Galileo infamy. There is a lot of conversation about Caste and about how Christians in India see themselves within their own cultural context. Great book!