Lecture | Booklaunch – CoGloSS | Oosters Genootschap | Leiden University Press
The Open Door to Hidden Paganism. Abraham Rogerius’s Account of South Indian Hinduism (1651)
Author: Benjamin Leathley (Università di Bologna)
Date: Tuesday 27 May 2025 Time: 15:00 – 17:00
Location: P.J. Veth Nonnensteeg 1-3, 2311 VJ Leiden
Room1.01
Series COGLOSS Seminars 2024-2025
Benjamin Leathley is a PhD candidate at the Università di Bologna and Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona. His research interests include early modern travel writing and ethnography and its reception in Europe, as well as the conceptualisation of paganism and idolatry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
During this book launch, he will engage in conversation with:
Peter Bisschop (LIAS, Leiden University)
Richard Caris (Department of History, Utrecht University)
Joan Pau Rubiés (Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona)
Carolien Stolte (Institute for History, Leiden University)
Chair: Jos Gommans (Institute for History, Leiden University), Editor of LUP Series Dutch Sources on Colonial and Global History
For whom?
Everyone is welcome. No registration is required.
Organisation
Oosters Genootschap Nederland, Leiden University Press (LUP), and Colonial and Global History at Institute for History, Leiden University.
Book
Abraham Rogerius’s Account of South Indian Hinduism (1651): Critical Introduction, Dutch Text, and Annotated English Translation
Author: Benjamin Leathley
Leiden University Press, March 2025
This book presents the first-ever English translation of ‘The Open Door to Hidden Paganism’, one of the earliest and most detailed studies of South Indian Hinduism. Written in 1651 by Abraham Rogerius, a Dutch East India Company clergyman and missionary, it offers an unexpectedly balanced account of the customs and traditions of the South Indian Brahmins. This made it a cornerstone of early European Indology.
In addition to the Dutch original, this edition includes a full English translation, along with the extensive footnotes provided by an anonymous Dutch editor who contextualised Rogerius’s account for a seventeenth-century audience. Text and footnotes together uncover a so-far hidden religious and philosophical conversation of global dimension. Equipped with a rich introduction and detailed endnotes, this comprehensive edition of ‘The Open Door’ dives into the fascinating intersection of missionary agendas, ethnography, and antiquarianism that created this unique work.
Take a look at the event page here
