BESCHI, Costanzo Giuseppe. – Missionary and linguist of the Society of Jesus, b. at Castiglione della Stivire, 18 Nov. 1680, d. at Ambalacate, 4 Feb. 1747. Having entered the novitiate at Novellara in 1698, he departed for India in 1710, where he was assigned to the Malabar province and almost immediately to the mission at Madura; from 1720 to 1738 he had charge of the Tanjore district. He did not lack dangers and persecutions (in 1714 he nearly suffered martyrdom); yet he knew how to win the protection of the Muslim prince Chandrasahib, who captured Pondichéry in 1736; when the latter was defeated and captured by the Mahrattas, B. retired to the coast of the Fishery (in 1743 he was at Tuticorin), visitor of Madura, then of the college at Ambalacate (district of Cochin); he remained in this college until his death. Among the first in this mission, he made use of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and fought against Protestant missionaries, whom he first encountered in Madura (the Danish Lutherans had settled at Tranquebar in 1705).
He became renowned chiefly for his mastery of the Tamil language, to the extent that he composed works in both prose and verse. His great work, the *Thembavani*, or “Immarchesible Garland,” in honor of St. Joseph, is a work of 14,000 verses in which he succeeded in incorporating the entire history of the Old and New Testaments; still considered today one of the masterpieces of Tamil literature, it was not printed until 1851–52 at Pondichéry (with various reprints in prose and verse). In the same genre, he composed hymns in honor of the Madonna and a poem of 2,342 verses on the Portuguese martyr St. Quitteria.
Among his prose works, mention should be made of the *Vedair Olukkam*, a manual of spiritual life for catechists, modeled on the *Cura Pastoralis* of St. Gregory (printed at Pondichéry in 1840 and often reprinted, even by Protestants); the *Veda Vilakkam* is a systematic exposition of Catholic doctrine in 18 chapters (printed at Pondichéry in 1728 [7], 1840, etc.); to these may be added his polemical pamphlets against the Lutherans. In a certain way, the satirical novel *Le avventure del Guru Paramarata* also belongs to the polemical genre, which ridicules the defects of the Brahmins. He wrote it to introduce new missionaries to the spoken language and popular Indian psychology, giving it a vividness, a color, and at times a facetious tone that amuses (Latin translation by B. himself; modern versions in English, French, German, and various Indian languages).
The most technically linguistic work of B. includes a grammar of colloquial Tamil (printed as early as 1737 by the Protestants of Tranquebar, reprinted five times in the 19th century and remaining the basis for subsequent grammars); a Latin grammar of literary Tamil (printed only in an English version, Madras 1822 and Trinchinopoly 1917); a grammatical treatise on the same literary Tamil, *Tonul Vilakkam* (Pondichéry 1838, Negapatam 1864); two dictionaries, namely a quadruple Tamil dictionary (meaning of words, synonyms, literary genres, rhymes; 8th ed. in the 19th century) and a Tamil-Malayalam dictionary (Trichinopoly 1881); another Portuguese-Latin-Tamil lexicon remained in manuscript. Some authors also attribute to B. a grammar of Telugu.
The works of B., except for the Tamil grammar, circulated first in manuscript copies, owing to the lack of a Catholic Tamil printing press in India.