ABSTRACT
Applied to the concrete history of the Tranquebar Mission there are some studies of the wives and daughters of the missionaries, but the Indian women who contributed a great deal to the success of missionary work have been hitherto completely forgotten. Even when, as in some places, the work of a woman was described in great detail and praised, it was not always considered necessary to mention her name in this context. The noticeable gaps in the sources of the Tranquebar Mission with regard to the situation of women are replicated in the reports of subsequent mission societies. Since the contemporary religious understanding in Europe believed that the propagation of the gospel and all the work relating to this was a job for men, the participation of women in the work of conversion was initially not provided for in the Tranquebar Mission.
