In these excerpts from O národních písních a pověstech plemen slovanských (On National Songs and Myths of Slavic Peoples, 1853), Ľudovít Štúr (1815–1856), who was one of the most important figures of the Slovak national revival, claims that the pantheistic worldview appears strongly in both Indian and Slavic traditions. According to him, Indian tradition seeks union with the divine through suppressing thought, desire, emotion, and even life itself, whereas Slavic legends emphasise courage, action, self-denial, and helping others. He thus sees a fundamental affinity and difference between the Slavs and the Indians.
The author wrote this description of the Malabar region of India with the goal to obtain funding, public support, and recognition of Belgian Christian donors and churchgoers for the Belgian Carmelite mission’s efforts to convert native inhabitants of Malabar. For this goal, pamphlets and booklets (such as this one) were produced which are today kept in various repositories, as in the libraries of Carmelite cloisters in Ghent or Bruges. It details how Carmelite missionaries' conversion of the so-called ‘pagans’ or ‘heathens’ to the Christian faith worked on the Malabar Coast (and inland villages in Kerala).
Translation of a chapter on India, or “the Land of the Great Moghul,” from an 18th-century Dutch-language compendium of the countries of the world. Drawing extensively on an English model published in the 1740s, the author aims to give a concise account of “everything useful, necessary and worth knowing” about all countries of the world. In this section, he shares with his readers what he considers worth knowing about the Indian Subcontinent and its people.