History of the Telugu Christians: A Bibliography

Christian communities in the state Andhra Pradesh of south India and the Telugu Christians in diaspora have passed their stories from one generation to the next by oral traditions as well as in scattered texts. These memories have sustained Telugu Christian communities for over four centuries. Yet there has been no significant attempt made to compile a comprehensive history of the Telugu Christians until James Elisha Taneti’s History of the Telugu Christians: A Bibliography.

This annotated bibliography lists more than 700 published and unpublished textual sources related to the history of Telugu Christians from south India. Opening a window into the histories of 15 mission societies from the North American region, History of the Telugu Christians lists monographs, journal articles, letters, reports, minutes and the proceedings of missionary conferences, unpublished theses, dissertations, souvenirs, and manuscripts. The documents selected by Taneti were written or printed in the English or Telugu languages by native Christians and western missionaries.

Aimed to facilitate research and writing on Telugu Christians, Taneti’s insightful historiographical analysis and comprehensive list of bibliographic sources offer seminarians, historians of Christianity, and scholars of India the opportunity to study closely the meeting of East and West and the religious history of India through the founding and evolution of this community.