ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Christian uses of Hindi through a comparative study of translation choices. It focuses on translation choices among Hindi authors. The chapter examines translation strategies of foreign missionary translators in the early twentieth century in the context of the translation strategies of Indian Christian translators in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It brings to light the use of polytraditional words (shared across religions) in Hindi to anchor Christian ideas in Hindu and Muslim vocabulary. The chapter grounds its study of translation choices in an examination of the strategic use of a Hindi-language neologism like dehadhāraṇ to simultaneously distinguish Christian ideas from other religions and affirm Christian claims in terms of other religions.
