"Indische Mission LV. Malabar. Nilagiri. 1876 / Letters and Reports LV from North Kerala and the Nilgiris. 1876."

This volume corresponds in size and organisation to C-1.58. It is numbered right through. There are 201 documents. Three volumes of documents for the year 1877 follow C-1.60. The amount of correspondence in 1877 is perhaps 15 % larger than in 1876, and this seems to have resulted in an attempt to turn what had been the first of two annual volumes into two somewhat handier volumes. This three-volume structure continues till 1881. The organisation of the volumes also shows some interesting innovations. In South Karnataka there is a section for a mission station at Kundapur for the first time. Both at the General and District Conference levels there are sub-sections for different parts of the upper administration of the Basel Misison in India, not least for the two Mission District Inspectors of Schools. Most important: note that in Canara there are minutes of a meeting of a District Conference dated 28th November, and minutes of a meeting of a District Synod, dated 3rd December. The "Conference" is almost certainly the organ of the missionaries, the Synod a conscious development of an ecclesiastical organ and - this is visible in the list of speakers who gave reports - included a substantial number of indigenous people. Note for other references to the elusive "first Synod" in this or any of the other Basel Mission districts in India C-5-2.8 and C-5-2.9. But note ALSO the reference to District Synods held in Northern Kerala in 1868 and 1869, in Q-9.6.15 on pp. 281-282 above. Confusingly enough in C-1.61 the documents are numbered in three groups (General Conference, District officials, mission stations in South Mahratta). In C-1.62 each section is numbered separately. And C-1.63 is numbered through. NB "Ostindien" - literally: East India - was a common designation for the Indian Sub-continent at this time and appears in the Basel Mission archive frequently as a synonym for India.

1876

1876

Text