BESCHI, COSTANZO GIUSEPPE. - Missionary and linguist of the Society of Jesus, b. at Castiglione della Stiviere on 8 Nov. 1680, d. at Ambalacate on 4 Feb. 1747. Having entered the novitiate of Novellara in 1698, he left for India in 1710, where he was assigned to the province of Malabar, and almost immediately to the mission of Madura; from 1720 to 1738 he had charge of the district of Tanjore. He did not lack dangers and persecutions (in 1714 he narrowly escaped martyrdom); but he succeeded in winning the protection of the Muslim prince Chandra-Sahib, who conquered Pondichéry in 1736; when the latter was defeated and captured by the Mahrattas, B. withdrew to the coast of the Pescheria (in 1743 he was at Tuticorin), as visitor of Madura, then of the college of Ambalacate (district of Cochin); he remained in this college until his death. He was among the first in this mission to make use of the Esercizi spirituali of s. Ignazio, and he fought against the Protestant missionaries, whom he was the first to encoun-
He became famous chiefly for his mastery of the Tamil language, to the point of composing in prose and verse. His great work, the Thembavāni, or “Unfading Garland,” in honour of St Joseph, is an epic poem of 14,000 verses, into which he succeeded in introducing the entire history of the Old and New Testaments; still regarded today as one of the masterpieces of Tamil literature, it was nevertheless not printed until 1851–52 at Pondichéry (with various reprints in prose and verse). In the same genre, he composed hymns in honour of Our Lady and a poem of 2,342 verses on the Portuguese martyr St Quitteria.
Among his prose works, mention should be made of the Vediar Olukkam, a manual of spiritual life for catechists, modelled on the Cura Pastoralis of St Gregory (printed at Pondichéry in 1840 and frequently reprinted, including by Protestants); the Veda Vilakkam is a systematic exposition of Catholic doctrine in 18 chapters (printed at Pondichéry in 1728[?], 1840, etc.); to these are added his polemical pamphlets against the Lutherans. Somewhat connected with the polemical genre is the satirical novel The Adventures of Curu Paramarta, which ridicules the defects of the Brahmans. B. wrote it in order to introduce new missionaries to the spoken language and to Indian popular psychology, endowing it with an intensity of life, vivid colouring, and at times an amusingly witty tone (Latin translation by B. himself; modern versions in English, French, German, and various languages of India).
B.’s more strictly linguistic work includes a grammar of colloquial Tamil (already printed in 1737 by the Protestants of Tranquebar, reprinted five times during the nineteenth century, and remaining the basis of subsequent grammars); a Latin grammar of literary Tamil (printed only in an English version, Madras 1822 and Trichinopoly 1917); a grammatical treatise on the same literary Tamil, Tonal Vilakkam (Pondichéry 1838, Negapatam 1864); two dictionaries, namely a fourfold Tamil dictionary (meanings of words, synonyms, literary genres, rhymes; 8th ed. in the nineteenth century) and a Tamil-Latin dictionary (Trichinopoly 1881); another Portuguese-Latin-Tamil lexicon remained in manuscript. Some authors also attribute a Telugu grammar to B.
B.’s works, apart from the Tamil grammar, first circulated in manuscript copies, owing to the lack of a Catholic Tamil printing press in India.