Rev. Eurotos Parmales Hastings

American Clergyman, Missionary.

The Batticotta Seminary was an educational institute founded by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions's American Ceylon Mission at Vaddukodai, in the Jaffna Peninsula north Sri Lanka in 1823. It was founded as part of the medical mission of John Scudder, Sr. and was subsequently led by Nathan Ward.

The American Ceylon Mission (ACM) to Jaffna, Sri Lanka started with the arrival in 1813 of missionaries sponsored by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). The British colonial office in India and Ceylon restricted the Americans to the relatively small Jaffna Peninsula for geopolitical reasons for almost 40 years. The critical period of the impact of the missionaries was from the 1820s to early 20th century. During this time, they engaged in original translations from English to Tamil, printing, and publishing, establishing primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions and providing health care for residents of the Jaffna Peninsula. These activities resulted in many social changes amongst Sri Lankan Tamils that survive even today. They also led to the attainment of a lopsided literacy level among residents in the relatively small peninsula that is cited by scholars as one of the primary factors contributing to the recently ended civil war. Many notable educational and health institutions within the Jaffna Peninsula owe their origins to the missionary activists from America.

The Batticota Mission was at Vaddukoddai.

Other New Englanders also took important steps to provide educational opportunities for women. Harriet Winslow, a great-great-grandmother of the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, founded the Uduvil Girls' School in 1824, the first Girls’ boarding school in Asia.[8]Eliza Agnew from Pennsylvania was a teacher there for 42 years. Missionaries also made efforts to provide collegiate level education by founding the Batticota Seminary at Vaddukoddai in 1823 with Rev. Dr. Daniel Poor as its first principal.

The American Mission started the first printing press in Jaffna in 1820 and, in 1841, the island's second oldest newspaper.– Morning Star – and the first Tamil-language newspaper, Utayatarakai. In 1862, Rev. Miron Winslow published a Comprehensive Tamil-English Dictionary.

ACM also provided medical missionaries starting in 1820. The first medical center was managed by Dr. John Scudder. He founded what is considered to be the first Western Medical Mission in Asia at Panditeripo in Jaffna District. He served there for nineteen years in the dual capacity of clergyman and physician. His most important service was the establishment of a large hospital, of which he was physician in chief. He was especially successful in the treatment of cholera and yellow fever. He also founded several native schools and churches.

He and his wife Harriet had 6 surviving sons and 2 daughters who all became medical missionaries and worked in South India. Dr. Scudder was followed by Dr. Nathan Ward in 1836, who was replaced in 1846 by Dr. Samuel Fisk Green, who began a thirty-year medical practice and training program. By the 1850s, he had translated more than 1,000 pages of medical texts into Tamil.  He founded in Manipai what later became Green Memorial Hospital. This fledgling hospital was also used to train more than 60 locals in western medicine as fully fledged doctors. Of the first batch of 10 students only two by the name of Evarts and Ira Gould passed successfully. It was Sri Lanka’s first medical school as well as the only school until the present day to teach medicine in a local language.