The open door to hidden paganism: Abraham Rogerius’s account of South Indian Hinduism (1651): critical introduction, Dutch text, and annotated English translation

Leathley, Benjamin (2025)

Book (monograph)

This book presents the first-ever English translation of ‘The Open Door to Hidden Paganism’, one of the earliest and most detailed studies of South Indian Hinduism. Written in 1651 by Abraham Rogerius, a Dutch East India Company clergyman and missionary, it offers an unexpectedly balanced account of the customs and traditions of the South Indian Brahmins. This made it a cornerstone of early European Indology. In addition to the Dutch original, this edition includes a full English translation, along with the extensive footnotes provided by an anonymous Dutch editor who contextualised Rogerius’s account for a seventeenth-century audience. Text and footnotes together uncover a so-far hidden religious and philosophical conversation of global dimension. Equipped with a rich introduction and detailed endnotes, this comprehensive edition of ‘The Open Door’ dives into the fascinating intersection of missionary agendas, ethnography, and antiquarianism that created this unique work.

• India
• Hinduism
• Ethnography
• Travel writing
• VOC
• Antiquarianism
• Comparative religion
• Protestant mission

• All authors: Leathley, Benjamin
• Date: 2025
• Volume: 8
• Pages: 1 - 641
• Publisher: Leiden: Leiden University Press (LUP)
• ISBN (print): 9789087284367
• ISBN (electronic): 9789400604766
• Note: This book presents the first-ever English translation of 'The Open Door to Hidden Paganism', one of the earliest and most detailed studies of South Indian Hinduism.
• Name: Colonial and global history through Dutch sources