priest or teacher, "Vedam" (?????) for the Bible, "poosai" (????) for Mass, and others. He composed Catechisms, explanatory works and philosophic discourses in Tamil and contributed to the development of modern Tamil prose writing.

The Portuguese missionaries who preceded him had found their converts among the lower classes, which had also earned them the scorn of the brahmins. Nobili's methods implicitly criticized the Portuguese approach and were therefore very controversial with his fellow Jesuits