Malabar History journal

Biography

Gundert was born in 4 February, 1814 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was born to a businessman named Ludwig Gundert. His education began with his parents and a private tutor named Jeremias Flatt. In 1827, he joined a seminary in Maulbronn. On 15 October, 1831 he joined the royal seminary in Tubingen. At the University of Tubingen, he studied theology and also learnt Sanskrit and received his doctorate in 1835. Further, he pursued his interest in Christian missionary work. Then he moved to England to further hi.s knowledge of missionary work and learned Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, and Urdu.

Hermann Gundert came to India as a missionary with the Basel Mission and travelled extensively throughout India. In November 1838, Gundert and his wife arrived in Mangalore. Then he went to Cannanore (Kannur), Tellicherry (Thalassery), and the Anjarakandy cinnamon plantation. T. L. Strange, a British judge, offered his bungalow in Illikkunnu near Tellicherry to the Basel Mission on condition of the establishment of a station to expand their mission. As a result, Gundert moved to this bungalow in Thalassery in April 1839 and lived there for about 20 years. He studied the local language from recognized instructors such as Uracheri Gurukkanmar of Chokli, a village near Thalassery, and consulted them in his writings. Gundert reported in August 1839 that he had studied Malayalam extensively and had created the first Malayalam school on the bungalow’s veranda in May. At the same time, his wife established the first boarding school for girls.

In the following months, Gundert opened Malayalam schools at Kadirur, Thalassery Fort, Mahe, and Dharmadam. He visited all of these schools on a regular basis and invited the teachers to Illikkunnu for further education. Gundert had five Pandits in his house at times, discussing ancient Indian history, philosophy, and religion, as well as studying traditional Indian literature. He also translated the Bible into Malayalam.
Gundert left India and moved to Calw in Southern Germany in 1859 due to poor health. In 1862, he became the director of the Calw Publishing House in the Black Forest town of Calw.

He died on April 25, 1893, and was buried in Calw cemetery.

Major Contributions

Literary contributions

Within a year of his arrival to Malabar, he had translated twenty songs from German into Malayalam. Also, he introduced a total of thirty new songs to the new Christians at Christmas celebrations in 1840. Gundert also made regular visits to the villages of Thalassery, became acquainted with the locals, collected as many words, phrases, and proverbs as he could, and shared with them the gospel. During this time, he published approximately thirteen books in Malayalam. Many of the items Gundert collected – old Malayalam documents and texts from Tellicherry and other parts of Malabar were eventually donated by him to the University of Tübingen. This is published by Dr. Scaria Zacharia as Thalassery Rekhakal.

Gundert was intrigued by the Malayalam language and attempted to construct a grammar for it. Shortly after his arrival, he published a treatise on Malayalam with the title Grammar of the Malayalam. A manuscript copy of this work, completed in 1839, is available in Tuebingen University library. His method is widely regarded as one of the most effective non-Sanskrit-based approaches to Malayalam grammar. He thought Malayalam originated from Proto-Tamil-Malayalam or Proto-Dravidian. He also introduced punctuation marks to the Malayalam language, including the full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, and question mark.

Names of his major publications are: Keralolpathi(1843), Pazhancholmala (1845, Malayalam proverbs for Christian theological idioms), Malayala Bhasha Viyakaranam (Malayalam Grammar,1851), Paathamala (First textbook in Malayalam,1860), Kerala pazhama (33 years of Kerala history, from Vasco da Gama’s arrival in 1498, 1868, New Testament (1868), School Dictionary (1870), Malayalam-English Dictionary (1872), Malayalarajyam (1879), Rajyasamacharam (1847 ), Paschimodayam (1847), Sankeerthanangal (1881).

However, he was forced to depart from India and move to Calw in Southern Germany in 1859 due to ill health. Eventually, he began work on an English-Malayalam dictionary, which he finished ten years later and published in 1872.