John P. (John Peter) Jones

Born in 1847 and of Welsh background, John P. Jones studied at Western Reserve University and at Andover Theological Seminary before joining the Madura Mission of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1878. He worked in India for many years, especially in the south, and became known as a missionary observer of Indian life and religion.

His books include India, Its Life and Thought and India's Problem, Krishna or Christ. Those works show his effort to explain India to English-speaking readers through long personal experience, combining description of culture and belief with the missionary viewpoint of his time.

Jones died in 1916. Today he is remembered mainly through his missionary writings, which remain useful as historical windows into both colonial-era India and the outlook of Protestant missions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.