It’s not often that a missionary to India is honoured for his secondary mission rather than his primary mission to spread the Gospel. In the mid 1800s, one such man who from Germany came to India as a missionary landing in the coastal town of Mangalore and ended up making exceptional contributions to the Kannada language for which he is credited even today. Rev. Dr. Ferdinand Kittel may not have given much to society from his mission work, but the German’s exemplary work in the field of Kannada literature and language is one of the most significant contributions by a foreigner to the development of an Indian language.
His most monumental work is a 1,758-paged Kannada-to-English dictionary, brought out in 1894 which is considered unparalleled in any Indian language.
Besides being a lexicon, giving the meaning of words, it is a store-house of literary allusions, thesaurus, and a self-teaching Kannada Reader, according to Kannada literature sources.
Born on April 7, 1832, in Resterhafe, East Frisia, Germany, Ferdinand took to languages like a fish takes to water at a very young age. Heeding his inner calling, he joined the Basel Mission in Germany as a priest and sent to India to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ among the Kannada natives. He is remembered most for adapting to the region and becoming what many call him even today – ‘An Indian among Indians’.
Arriving as a young 21-year-old at the Basel Mission centres in Mangalore and Dharwad, Ferdinand easily fell in love with the Kannada language and began working on learning and studying the region’s dialects and styles. Instead of working on his Gospel mission however, Ferdinand followed his passion for the language and went on to concentrate his efforts to become a Kannada lexicographer.
Despite the initial reproach from Basel Mission for neglecting his calling, Ferdinand spent nearly 24 years traversing the state of Karnataka to bring out his Magnus Opus -the over-70,000 word dictionary in 1894.
Sources say his labour of love paved way for more works such as a Kannada grammar book called ‘A Grammar of the Kannada Language: Comprising the Three Dialects of the language’, translations of poems and carols, books on Hindu rituals, nature and God, as well as textbooks and other significant editions.
It is also noted that he wrote articles in the first ever Kannada daily ‘Mangalore Samachara’ and worked on Haridasa Keertans, Puranas and Kodava rituals. It is said that Basel Mission did not approve of his negligence to missionary work and transferred him to a remote locations but that only seemed to increase his fervour for his work with Kannada. Many say that Ferdinand was so passionate about his work that he would most often work for over 18 hours in a day. Such was the dedication of this man towards Kannada that even now, Kannada literary experts refer to his work as most significant in his time.
Ferdinand died on December 18, 1903 in Tübingen, Germany.
A tribute to this phenomenal man is a statue nestled in the heart of Bangalore at a traffic island park on Mahatma Gandhi Road’s Mayo Hall junction. Often overlooked and passed without second thoughts, the statue was set up in
and stands as a testament to the contributions of the visionary. The black stoned statue has an elderly Ferdinand smiling with one hand lifted as if he was addressing his viewers and another placed on top of a thick dictionary mounted on a stool next to him. Passersby may often spot him holding a Kannada flag in his raised hand - a perfect mark of respect to a man who worked tirelessly for the state’s language and proved that anyone can contribute to a nation’s glory and the shaping of its culture and regional identity– even a foreigner.
