of a suitable Tamil typeface for his purposes. In a letter dated 7/4/1713 to George Lewis, the Anglican chaplain at Madras, and first printed in Portuguese, on the press the mission had recently received from the Society, for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Ziegenbalg writes: "We may remember on this Occasion, how much the Art of Printing contributed to the Manifestation of divine Truths, and the spreading of Books for that End, at the Time of the happy Reformation, which we read of in History, with Thanksgiving to Almighty God." Following this, he began translating the Old Testament, building "himself a little house in a quiet area away from the centre of the town, where he could pursue tranquilly what he regarded as the most important work of all. On 28 September 1714, he reports to Francke that the book Exodus has now been completed. At the time of his death, he had continued the work up to the Book of Ruth." Other works Ziegenbalg compiled the Tamil-language Bhakti poetry, aiming to promote a better understanding of the natives among the Europeans. However, when he sent these volumes to Halle for publication, his mentor his mentor wrote that the duty of the missionaries was "to extirpate heathenism, and not to spread heathenish nonsense in Europe". S. Muthiah in his fond remembrance ("") ends with an inventory of the man's lesser-known works: "Apart from the numerous Tamil translations of Christian publications he made, he wrote several books and booklets that could be described as being Indological in nature. He also had the press printing educational material of a more general nature. As early as 1708, he had compiled his Bibliothece Malabarke, listing the 161 Tamil books he had read and describing their content. In 1713, in Biblia Tamulica he expanded this bibliography. Also in 1713, the press produced what was perhaps the first Almanac to be printed in India. Then, in 1716, there appeared what was probably the first book printed in Asia in English, A Guide to the English Tongue, by Thomas Dyche. The next year, the press printed an A.B.C. (in Portuguese) for schools in the English territories. What did not get printed in Tranquebar were Ziegenbalg's Indological writings. In fact, his works like Nidiwunpa ( Moral Quartrains), Kondei Wenden (a Tamil ethics text), Ulaga Nidi (World Moral, Tamil), and his books on Hinduism and Islam were printed only 150-250 years