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 set out in 1710 for India, 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 knew how to win 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 Fishery Coast (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 made use, among the first in this mission, of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and fought against the Protestant missionaries, whom he was the first to encoun-
entered Madura (the Danish Lutherans had settled at Tranquebar in 1705).
He became famous chiefly for his mastery of the Tamil language, to the point of composing in both prose and verse. His great work, the Thembavāni, or "Unfading Garland," in honor of St. Joseph, is an epic of 14,000 verses, into which he managed to fit the entire history of the Old and New Testaments; still considered today 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 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 Vediar Olukkam, a manual of spiritual life for catechists, modeled on St. Gregory's Cura Pastoralis (printed at Pondichéry in 1840 and often reprinted, even by the 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 pamphlets of polemic against the Lutherans. The satirical novel The Adventures of Guru Paramarta, which ridicules the faults of the Brahmins, is connected in some way to the polemical genre. B. wrote it to initiate new missionaries into the spoken language and the popular psychology of India, giving it an intensity of life, a color, and at times a facetious tone that entertains (Latin translation by B. himself; modern versions in English, French, German and various languages of India).
B.'s most technically linguistic work comprises 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 of subsequent grammars); a grammar in Latin of literary Tamil (printed only in 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 quadruple dictionary of Tamil (meaning of words, synonyms, literary genres, rhymes; 8th ed. in the 19th century) and a Tamil-Latin dictionary (Trichinopoly 1881); another Portuguese-Latin-Tamil lexicon remained in manuscript. Some authors also attribute to B. a Telugu grammar.
B.'s works, except for the Tamil grammar, circulated first in manuscript copies, for lack of a Catholic Tamil printing press in India.