who began their own efforts to counter the methods of the Christians. Response to Protestant propaganda In September 1842 two hundred Hindu men gathered at a Siva temple monastery. The group decided to open up a school to study Vedas and Agamas. The group also decided to start a press with the help of resident Eurasian Burghers. Arumugam Navalar who was part of the organisation wrote about the meeting in The Morning Star in a sympathetic tone. While Arumugam Navalar was still working under Peter Percival and translating the Bible, he published a seminal letter in The Morning Star under a pseudonym in September 1841. It was a comparative study of Christianity and Hindu Saivism and targeted the weakness in the argument Christian missionaries had used against local Hindu Saiva practices. The missionaries had attacked the idol worship and temple rituals of the local Hindu Saivas as "devilish" and of "no value". Navalar, an avid reader of the Bible as he worked to translate it into Tamil, stated that Christianity and Jesus himself were rooted in the temple rituals of the ancient Israelites and that the reverence to the icons of Christianity such as the cross was akin to Shaiva's reverence for the icons of Hinduism such as the lingam. If Christians find their churches, rites and symbols as pedagogically useful, why shouldn't Shaiva Hindus have the same human rights and religious choices, argued Navalar. His letter admonished the missionaries for misrepresenting their own religion and concluded that in effect there was no difference between Christianity and Hindu Saivism as far as idol worship and temple rituals were concerned. Circuit preaching Using the preaching methods popularised by the Methodist preachers, he became a circuit preacher. His first secession was on 31 December 1847 at Vaitheeswaran Temple in Vannarpannai. It was a weekly event known as Prasangams on every Friday evening. In these secession he read from sacred texts and then preached in a manner that lay people understood. He was helped by his friend Karttikeya Aiyar of Nallur and his students from his school. The sermon topics were mostly ethical, liturgical, and theological and included the evils of adultery, drunkenness, the value of non-killing, the conduct of women, the worship of the linga, the four initiations, the importance of giving alms, of protecting cows, and the unity of God. Emphasis on Agamas In his weekly sermons, he attacked Christians and