India, Aug. 17 -- Knowledge is a vast ocean. Scholars merely dive into its depths, retrieve a few pearls of knowledge and wisdom, and, in the process, inspire others to dive deeper. My friend Dr RB Sreekala has done precisely this. She has delved deep into the work of Arnos Pathiri and emerged with Koodashappana (Sacramental Song), a painstaking attempt to revisit one of the remarkable works of early Malayalam Christian literature.

Arnos Pathiri was the Malayalam name by which Johann Ernst Hanxleden, a German Jesuit priest who came to Keralam in the early eighteenth century, became known. Born in 1681, he spent most of his life in Keralam and became a remarkable scholar of Sanskrit and Malayalam.

He was not merely a missionary. He was ...