Acharya, I will work on timeframing the scholarships.
On protestant-catholic issue, my thinking:
There is a very clear 'protestant-catholic' struggle amongst the early Indologists (Orientalists as they called themselves). One would be surprised to notice another aspect of the scholarly struggle amongst the same Indologists at that time -'whether Thomas the apostle ever visited India'. Surprising to note that majority of early protestant Indologists reject that Thomas ever visited India. Catholic Indologists (especially Jesuits) were very bitter about it with protestants. I read a book by an 18th century Jesuit mentioning this (will try to search if it is there on google, or scan some pages and post).
There were two clear camps of Indologists of 18th century. First - Portugese and Dutch, later joined by Germans, insisted that Bible is historically right to the last single word of it; that Hebrew is the original language of all humans; that Thomas the apostle was very much in India, that India and China both had rejected him and as a result suffered the spiritual and wordly calamities (they aparently did not know about Gupta period); that saint Francis-Xavior was sent by Pope to India to 'clear the weeds' that grew after Thomas, and so on. On the other camp, French and later British Indologists - mostly protestants, tried to demolish many of these points. SOme said Thomas went to Africa and not India and so on.... To counter this, Dutch Jesuits in India did a lot of writing around this, and their literature - mostly in dutch - can still be found (let me post some google book links later)
But, this would all change by the mid of 19th century when British have made up the plan of the 'Great Game' in India. All scholars are united that "Aryans from X invaded India". X continued to be debated. By now, all protestants concede that Thomas did somehow visit India, though failed to make any impression here (this leaves Catholics somewhat heart broken - if an apostle could not make India christian what would! - protestants answer, of course Aryan invaders would!)
On protestant-catholic issue, my thinking:
There is a very clear 'protestant-catholic' struggle amongst the early Indologists (Orientalists as they called themselves). One would be surprised to notice another aspect of the scholarly struggle amongst the same Indologists at that time -'whether Thomas the apostle ever visited India'. Surprising to note that majority of early protestant Indologists reject that Thomas ever visited India. Catholic Indologists (especially Jesuits) were very bitter about it with protestants. I read a book by an 18th century Jesuit mentioning this (will try to search if it is there on google, or scan some pages and post).
There were two clear camps of Indologists of 18th century. First - Portugese and Dutch, later joined by Germans, insisted that Bible is historically right to the last single word of it; that Hebrew is the original language of all humans; that Thomas the apostle was very much in India, that India and China both had rejected him and as a result suffered the spiritual and wordly calamities (they aparently did not know about Gupta period); that saint Francis-Xavior was sent by Pope to India to 'clear the weeds' that grew after Thomas, and so on. On the other camp, French and later British Indologists - mostly protestants, tried to demolish many of these points. SOme said Thomas went to Africa and not India and so on.... To counter this, Dutch Jesuits in India did a lot of writing around this, and their literature - mostly in dutch - can still be found (let me post some google book links later)
But, this would all change by the mid of 19th century when British have made up the plan of the 'Great Game' in India. All scholars are united that "Aryans from X invaded India". X continued to be debated. By now, all protestants concede that Thomas did somehow visit India, though failed to make any impression here (this leaves Catholics somewhat heart broken - if an apostle could not make India christian what would! - protestants answer, of course Aryan invaders would!)