India: Religion

Former name: Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. Each collection contains multiple works on Tibetan literature which have been assembled specifically to be incorporated into institutional libraries. Each collection comprises roughly 1000 volumes from the TBRC holdings selected by E. Gene Smith, Executive Director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. Within each Core Text Collection, each work is provided in both Adobe Acrobat PDF and TIFF formats.

Features publications from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the South American Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) between 1804 and 2009. Module 1 features publications from the Church Missionary Society and the South American Missionary Society between 1804 and 2009. The focus of this second module is on the publications of CMS medical mission auxiliaries, the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society among women in Asia and the Middle East, newsletters from native churches and student missions in China and Japan, and 'home' material including periodicals aimed specifically at women and children subscribers. The longest-running series in this part is India’s Women (and subsequent titles), through which the work of the CEZMS in China and India, from 1880 to 1957, can be studied. CMS medical journals encompass the work of medical missionaries and mission hospitals in all fields, including Africa, the Middle East, India and China. The principal series is Mercy and Truth, which was published from 1897-1940.

Evangelism in India took the form primarily of village itineration where male and female missionaries ministered to the spiritual needs of the populace while simultaneously attending to their medical and educational needs. The collection documents the Board of Foreign Missions' tripartite ministry (Farukhabad, Punjab, and the West Indian missions) in India but also reflects the development of the modern Indian state in a broader sense. Reaction to foreigners generally and Protestant missionaries specifically, discontent with British rule and the development of the Independence movement, and racial and internecine religious warfare between Hindu and Muslim populations are well documented.

"The American Presbyterian Church was committed at its inception to the belief that it is a missionary church and that every member is a missionary. The establishment in 1837 of the Presbyterian Church's Board of Foreign Missions signaled the beginning of a worldwide missionary operation destined to embrace some fifteen countries in four different continents. The records offered here provide invaluable information on social conditions in the Philippines and on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century. Documenting the church's educational, evangelical, and medical work, these are records mainly of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters"--Publisher's description

The documents in this resource come from the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). Some are true archives, arising from the work of the Society in India; some are manuscripts which cover the period when the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), founded in 1698 was working with the Royal Danish (Lutheran) Mission, founded in 1705. They chart the history of Anglican Protestant engagement in the region from shortly after the strategic turning point in the fortunes of the East India Company wrought by Colonel Robert Clive in the 1750s, through to the toppling of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the controversial changes to the EIC's charter in 1813, the Sepoy Rebellion of 1856-1857, and on right through to Partition in 1947. As with the Society's missions elsewhere in the world, the documents also trace the gradual shift that began in the early 19th century from a church dependent on English priests to one increasingly led by indigenous clergy. Accompanied by an online guide to the collection by Isobel Pridmore, formerly the archivist at the USPG, whose archives are now held at Rhodes House Library in Oxford.

Includes detailed information on 9,000 Christian denominations and on religions in every country of the world. Extensive data are available on 238 countries and 13,000 ethnolinguistic peoples, as well as on 5,000 cities and 3,000 provinces.