Philippus Baldaeus
Philips Baelde or Philippus Baldaeus, (baptized on 24 October 1632,[1] Delft – 1671,[2] Geervliet) was a Dutch minister.
As the second European after Abraham Rogerius, in his illustrated Description of the East Indian Countries of Malabar, Coromandel, Ceylon, etc.
He wrote much about the religious, civil and domestic conditions of the places he visited and introduced his account of the Hindu mythology.
[citation needed] After attending Latin school he followed the footsteps of his maternal uncle and Reformed missionary, Robert Junius, active in Dutch Formosa from 1629 to 1643.
For a year and a half Philips studied philosophy, logic and oriental languages in Groningen (1649) and then theology in Leiden (1650-1654).
He lived from July 1655 in Batavia, Dutch East Indies, went to Makassar, Malacca and remarried Elisabeth Tribolet on board of a ship and on his way to Ceylon.
[9] Baldaeus preached from 1657 to 1658 during Rijckloff van Goens's campaign against the Portuguese in Negapatnam on the Coromandel Coast.
The Dutch campaign against the Portuguese began in Jaffna, passing Mannar, Tuticorin and Nagapattinam and ended in South India.
[11] Baldaeus served in Ceylon, both the Dutch Reformed Church as well as the native, formerly Catholic Christians, whom he had almost put the new faith.
In the ranks of soldiers in the service of the VOC, there were also many Lutherans, especially German, considered by the pastors as a rival faith and were often sharply attacked in sermons.
Although primarily interested in proselytizing the Hindus and Catholics, he also strove for a better education for the natives, and as a result at the time of his departure, there were 18,000 school children whom he was responsible for as a religious teacher.
VOC was greedy and overruled the Calvinistic preachers on ecclesiastical matters ("confusion breeds over godsvrucht", "greed over fear of God").
The preacher had to turn on all sorts of ills - alcoholism, corruption, lax morals, slave trade and husbandry, abuse, etc.
Under a big tamarind tree in the middle of the Point Pedro Market Square stands a white limestone inscription which marks the place where Rev.
Baldaeus recorded everything of value with ethnological, historical, geographical and theological viewpoints from himself or of informants (e.g., a baptized pundit), interpreters, or from the collections of the Jesuit libraries in Ceylon and South India.
The book is divided into the following sections: With an ethnological, historical, geographical and theological point of view, Baldaeus recorded everything that he himself or from the knowledge of high caste learned people (pundits).
in addition he gathered material brought by interpreters from the holdings of the Jesuit libraries in Ceylon and southern India and also later in the Netherlands from all the accessible literature about this part of South Asia.
Thus, his knowledge of Sanskrit, as well as of the Portuguese as a lingua franca was widely used by him; In addition, he cited in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, English, French and Italian.
