The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Page 4

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

presents one of the great barriers to mission-work.
Almost all mission-societies, as well as we, labor
to the largest extent among the outcastes of India,
who number approximately 60,000,000. Under God,
it is owing to the courtesy and sway of the British
government that we are permitted to work in peace.

Our Missouri Ev. Luth. Missions are conducted
in the Madras Province, to which the so-called
Madras (Indian) States of Travancore and Cochin
belong. This province has an area of 142,330 miles,
which means that it is as large as our States of
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Maryland. The popula-
tion of the Madras Province is 42,322,270, or one-
third as large as that of all the United States.

For the purpose of administration we have
divided our whole India field into three district con-
ferences —the Northern District Conference, the
Nagercoil District Conference, and the Trivandrum
District Conference.

The Northern District Conference.

The Northern District -Conference begins,
roughly, at Ambur, 113 miles west of Madras, and
extends into the native State of Mysore. We call it
the “Northern” only because it lies north of our other
two conferences. A more fitting name will have to
be found for it.

The Nagercoil and Trivandrum District
Conferences.

These two conferences labor chiefly in the native
Indian State of Travancore, but in the south extend
over into the Tinnevelly District of the Madras
Presidency and in the north into the native Indian
State of Cochin.

TRAVANCORE.

The Native State of Travancore lies in the
extreme Southwest of India. It may fitly be called
the garden of that great country. Travancore has
a length of 174 and a breadth of 75 miles. In square
miles it is only a little smaller than our own New
Jersey. However, while New Jersey has a popula-
tion of 3,155,000, Travancore has a population of
4,006,000. One-fourth of this population is reported
to profess some form of Christianity. It is claimed,
though historically it cannot be proved, that the
Apostle Thomas labored in that section of India.
Travancore surpasses most all the other Indian
states in popular education. The distance by rail
from Madras to Trivandrum is 591 miles.

The Nagercoil District Conference.
The Nagercoil Conference is named for Nager-
coil, the chief city of Southern Travancore, which

has a population of possibly 30,000. Nagercoil lies
in the southern section of Travancore, some fifty
miles by auto bus from the railroad.

LANGUAGE.

In the Northern and in the Nagercoil District
the vernacular with only a few exceptions is the
Tamil. The few exceptions are Telugu and Kan-
arese. In the Trivandrum District, however, we
enter into an entirely new language area, namely,
the Malayalam. Let us now direct our attention
to the

' Trivandrum District Conference.

The Conference takes its name from Trivan-
drum, the beautiful capital of Travancore. Tri-
vandrum lies on a railroad fifty miles north of
Nagercoil and is easily accessible from that city by
auto bus. It is the residential city of the Maharajah
of Travancore. The city has a population of ap-
proximately 73,000. Near it we have our oldest
station in this section of the state. The territory of
the Trivandrum District Conference extends north
into the neighboring State of Cochin.

CHINA.

An exact census of the Chinese nation has never
been taken, though the government has its own
ancient method of determining the population as
nearly as possible without an actual count. Neither
has the number of followers of any specific form of
Teligion, with the exception of the Christian, been
definitely fixed. It may be nearly correct to say
that the number of Confucianists, Taoists, and
Buddhists is about 430 million; of Mohammedans,
9 million; of Christians, 1 million. The number of
minor religious divisions is negligible. Like in
India, so also in China a large number of missionary
societies, European and American, are engaged in
propagating what they believe to be the Christian
religion. There is no province in China, be it ever
so remote, in which no missionary work is done.
Since the recent antiforeign movement has subsided,
missionaries in large numbers have returned to
their former field of labor, though the former whole
number of laborers has not yet been reached. The
prospects for renewed missionary endeavor are ex-
ceedingly promising. Virtually all China with its
uncounted millions is an open door to earnest mis-
sionary endeavors. What a-field, what a field!!

Our Missouri Lutheran missions are conducted
in two provinces of Central China, namely, in
Hupeh and Szechwan. Hupeh has a population of
28,500,000, and the population of Szechwan is