Mukti in Kristapurana. How Thomas Stephens S.J. (1549-1619) conveys a Christian message of salvation in words with Hindu connotations

Abstract

This thesis examines how the English Jesuit Father Thomas Stephens used a language full of Hindu connotations for conveying a Christian message in his Marathi epic Kristapurāṇa, written in Goa in the early years of the 17th century. Specifically it seeks to analyse (1) which words Stephens used for speaking about salvation, (2) which ideas about salvation he thereby conveyed, and (3) how he dealt with connotations of such words that are difficult to accommodate in a Christian worldview. Stephens’ strategies for handling such words is analysed by means of Saussure’s understanding of a language as a system of differences and a word as a sign, composed of a signal (sound pattern) and a signification (concept), where the relation between signal and signification is arbitrary. Stephens’ work is described as fearlessly adopting signals borrowed from Hinduism but sometimes altering the signification, thereby forming a sign which looks identical to that used in Hindu context, but with a signification that fits in a Christian worldview. The altering of important signs, such as mukti/mokṣa, leads to a reshaping of the language into a system where e.g. mukti/mokṣa significates salvation as liberation, but not from rebirth, and where punarjanma stands not for rebirth as a hindrance for liberation, but a new birth which liberates. In this way Stephens is found to present a message about salvation that in all essentials mirrors Catholic theology of his time, but giving it a distinctly Indian flavour.