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 Cover of the second edition (1996) | |
| Author | Nigel Jenkins |
|---|---|
| Country | Wales |
| Language | English |
| Published | 1995 |
| Publisher | Gomer |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 342 |
| ISBN | 9781859021842 |
Gwalia in Khasia is a 1995 travelogue by Welsh author Nigel Jenkins. Published by Gomer, it won the Wales Book of the Year in 1996. [1]
Gwalia in Khasia tells the story of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists' Mission to the Khasi Hills in north-east India between 1841 and 1969. Three different narrative strands interweave throughout the book: the first being the life and work of Thomas Jones (1810–1849) of Montgomeryshire: the first Calvinist Methodist missionary to reach the hills in April 1841. [2] [3] Jones became a Calvinistic Methodist minister in 1840, and shortly afterwards set out for India with his wife Anne. His practical skills were valued by the Khasi community, and he learned their language by living among them. [4] Jones recorded the Khasi language in Roman script, and the inscription on his gravestone in the Scottish Cemetrary in Kolkata calls him "the founding father of the Khasi alphabet and literature". He was expelled from the church in 1847 for, amongst other things, involving himself in the commercial venture of farming. As a result of his criticisms of a local industrialist, Harry Inglis, Jones was later forced to leave the Khasi hills. During his escape through the jungle he contracted malaria, and died on 16 September 1849.
The second narrative strand in Gwalia in Khasia is the tale of the mission in the time after Thomas Jones, including the impact of the 1897 Assam earthquake, which destroyed most of the mission buildings but also drove hundreds of Khasis into the arms of the Church. [5] This narrative strand wraps up in 1969, when the remaining missionaries left India.
The third strand is the account of Jenkins' own travels in the Khasi hills during the early 1990s. [2]
In 1996, Gwalia in Khasia won the Wales Book of the Year award. In 2002, the book was republished in India by Penguin under the title Through The Green Door: Travels Among the Khasis. [6]
In the obituary for Jenkins published in The Independent in 2014, Meic Stephens noted that Gwalia in Khasia "was compared by competent critics to the work of such travel-writers as Jan Morris and Paul Theroux." [1]
The story of the Welsh mission to the Khasi hills detailed in Gwalia in Khasia was also the subject of two television documentaries, both written and presented by Jenkins. The first was Gwalia yng Nghasia, a three-part Welsh-language documentary series for S4C, which aired during March and April 1994. The second was a one-hour documentary for BBC Wales, this time in the English language, which aired a year later in 1995. [7]
Jenkins also edited an accompanying anthology of poetry and prose from the Khasi Hills, entitled Khasia in Gwalia. [8] The first collection of Khasi literature to appear in the West, it featured the writing of Desmond L. Kharmawphlang, Robin S. Ngangom, Lealle Hardinge Pde, Kynpham Singh Nongkynrlh and Gweneth Alicia Mawlong. Released by Alun Books in June 1995, the anthology was published to coincide with a tour of Wales by the five writers involved, who were joined on tour by three Khasi musicians: Brek Wansett, Jurimon Risaw and Sanjarawain Risaw. All of the poems appeared in the anthology their original languages of either Khasi or English, with the poems in Khasi translated by the poets into English and some poems additionally translated into Welsh by the poet Dafydd Rowlands. [9]
The Presbyterian Church of Wales, also known as the Calvinistic Methodist Church, is a denomination of Protestant Christianity based in Wales.
Robert Ellis, also known by the bardic name Cynddelw, was a Welsh language poet, editor, biographer, lexicographer and eisteddfod adjudicator. He was born at Tyn y Meini, Bryndreiniog, Pen-y-Bont-Fawr, in the historic county of Montgomeryshire in Mid Wales, where he initially worked as a farm labourer.
Nigel Jenkins was an Anglo-Welsh poet. He was an editor, journalist, psychogeographer, broadcaster and writer of creative non-fiction, as well as being a lecturer at Swansea University and director of the creative writing programme there.
John Hughes Morris (1870–1953) was a Welsh author and an administrator of Christian missions. He was born in Penrhosllugwy, Anglesey but moved to Liverpool as a young lad. He only received elementary education at Chatsworth School, Liverpool but he had considerable talent, and when he was 22 years of age he came to work at the office of the Foreign Mission in Falkner Street, near the Philharmonic Hall. This mission began in Liverpool in 1840 by the Presbyterian Church of Wales. Morris remained at this office till 1949, a period of 57 years.
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This article is about the particular significance of the year 1849 to Wales and its people.
Thomas Jones was a Welsh Christian missionary, who worked among the Khasi people of Meghalaya and Assam in India and of Bangladesh. He recorded the Khasi language in Roman script, and the inscription on his gravestone calls him "The founding father of the Khasi alphabet and literature".
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Mike Jenkins is a Welsh poet and fiction writer in English. He is also the father of the Plaid Cymru politician Bethan Sayed and of the journalist Ciaran Jenkins.
Y Drysorfa was a Calvinistic Methodist publication produced in Wales and written in the Welsh language. Although published intermittently before 1830, it became a regular publication in 1831, when preacher John Parry became its editor.
William Williams was a Welsh Presbyterian missionary to Khasi Hills, northeast India, in the late 19th century. He was a son of a ship captain in Nanternis, a small village in Wales. Following his father's footstep he became a sailor for five years. Then he took a profession in carpentry for two years. After graduating in theology from East London Missionary Training Institute he became a pastor. Pursuing his ambition he became a missionary of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Foreign Mission to Khasi people in India from 1887 until his death. He died of typhoid in 1892.
Mawphlang is a village in the East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya state in north-eastern India, 25 kilometers from Shillong. The word maw means "stone", maw phlang means "grassy stone," and is one of many settlements in the Khasi hills named after monoliths.
Dr. Robert Arthur Hughes, M.B.Ch.B, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., F.R.C.S., O.B.E., was a medical missionary for the Presbyterian Church of Wales who worked in Shillong from 1939–1969 at the Welsh Mission Hospital, also known as the Dr. H. Gordon Roberts Hospital, Shillong. Hughes trained as a surgeon in London prior to his time in India. He is called the "Schweitzer of Assam," comparing his missionary work to that of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Schweitzer. During his 40 years in India, Hughes expanded the Welsh Mission Hospital and developed a traveling dispensary to aid those in the surrounding provinces. Hughes is best known for attempting to eradicate malaria from the area, introducing a vagus nerve resection process to alleviate pain from peptic ulcers and a rickets treatment in the infant population, recognising a protein calorie deficiency disorder called kwashiorkor in the Indian population, founding the area's first blood bank, performing the first lower segment Caesarean section without antibiotics to India, and expanding educational training for medical and nursing organisations.
Annie Florence Evans known as Florrie Evans was a Welsh revivalist, and later missionary, who was credited with starting the 1904–1905 Welsh revival.
U Larsing, also known as Larsing Khongwir, was an Evangelist missionary who practiced in the area of the Khasi Hills, Meghalaya, India during the late 1850s and early 1860s. Additionally, he was among the first Khasi Missionaries to visit and preach in England and Wales during the early 1860s