A Controversial Church/Temple Inscription in Central India

32pp. Estratto da "ORIENTALIA CHRISTIANA PERIODICA" 2008. Punto Metallico --- An ancient Sanskrit inscription in what is now a Hindu temple in central India has been interpreted both in a Hindu sense and horizon by a Brahmin scholar KamalaKanta and in a Christian sense and horizon by a French Jesuit missionary Benoît Burthey of the Madura Mission ( 1895). According to the latter, the long inscription is the record of a Christian church built in 1060 and dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. It recalls the salvation of humanity accomplished by the incarnate Son of God, the Divine Orient, who sent his apostle to India and dispelled all darkness. For the dedication, the Holy Mass was concelebrated by a great number of priests, twenty of whom distributed Holy Communion to a vast assembly. The pope, the Supreme Pontiff, had sent a relic, the authenticity of which was ascertained by Archbishop Zacharias. All this speaks of a flourishing Catholic (not Nestorian!) Christianity. However, this inscription is ignored by leading Hindu scholars and only a small fraction of it is published by the Archaeological Survey of India in its Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. VII (1978). This is intriguing and adds to the interest of this (temple ?) inscription, which needs to be first published in full, transcribed, translated and then interpreted.…