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Genealogy IndexChapter IX. Table of Contents Chapter XI.
Smith, George, C.I.E., LL.D.
Life Of William Carey - Shoemaker & Missionary
Chapter X.
The Wyclif Of The East--Bible Translation. 1801-1832. The Bible Carey's missionary weapon--Other vernacular translators--Carey's modest but just description of his labours--His philological key--Type-cutting and type-casting...
EVERY great reform in the
world has been, in the first instance, the work of one man, who, however
much he may have been the product of his time, has conceived and begun to
execute the movement which transforms society. This is true alike of the
moral and the physical forces of history, of contemporaries so apparently
opposite in character and aims as Carey and Clarkson on the one side and
Napoleon and Wellington on the other. Carey stood alone in his persistent
determination that the Church should evangelise the world. He was no less
singular in the means which he insisted on as the first essential
condition of its evangelisation--the vernacular translation of the Bible.
From the Scriptures alone, while yet a journeyman shoemaker of eighteen,
"he had formed his own system," and had been filled with the divine
missionary idea. That was a year before the first Bible Society was formed
in 1780 to circulate the English Bible among soldiers and sailors; and, a
quarter of a century before his own success led to the formation in 1804
of the British and Foreign Bible Society. From the time of his youth, when
he realised the self-evidencing power of the Bible, Carey's unbroken habit
was to begin every morning by reading one chapter of the Bible, first in
English, and then in each of the languages, soon, numbering six, which he
had himself learned.
Hence the translation of the Bible into all
the languages and principal dialects of India and Eastern Asia was the
work above all others to which Carey set himself from the time, in 1793,
when he acquired the Bengali. He preached, he taught, he "discipled" in
every form then reasonable and possible, and in the fullest sense of his
Master's missionary charge. But the one form of most pressing and abiding
importance, the condition without which neither true faith, nor true
science, nor true civilisation could exist or be propagated outside of the
narrow circle to be reached by the one herald's voice, was the publishing
of the divine message in the mother tongues of the millions of Asiatic men
and women, boys and girls, and in the learned tongues also of their
leaders and priests. Wyclif had first done this for the English-reading
races of all time, translating from the Latin, and so had begun the
Reformation, religious and political, not only in Britain but in Western
Christendom. Erasmus and Luther had followed him--the former in his Greek
and Latin New Testament and in his Paraphrase of the Word for "women and
cobblers, clowns, mechanics, and even the Turks"; the latter in his great
vernacular translation of the edition of Erasmus, who had never ceased to
urge his contemporaries to translate the Scriptures "into all tongues."
Tyndale had first given England the Bible from the Hebrew and the Greek.
And now one of these cobblers was prompted and enabled by the Spirit who
is the author of the truth in the Scriptures, to give to South and Eastern
Asia the sacred books which its Syrian sons, from Moses and Ezra to Paul
and John, had been inspired to write for all races and all ages.
Emphatically, Carey and his later coadjutors deserve the language of the
British and Foreign Bible Society, when, in 1827, it made to Serampore a
last grant of money for translation--"Future generations will apply to
them the words of the translators of the English Bible--'Therefore blessed
be they and most honoured their names that break the ice and give the
onset in that which helped them forward to the saving of souls. Now what
can be more available thereto than to deliver God's book unto God's people
in a tongue which they understand?'" Carey might tolerate interruption
when engaged in other work, but for forty years he never allowed anything
to shorten the time allotted to the Bible work. "You, madam," he wrote in
1797 to a lady as to many a correspondent, "will excuse my brevity when I
inform you that all my time for writting letters is stolen from the work
of transcribing the Scriptures into the Bengali language."
From no
mere humility, but with an accurate judgment in the state of scholarship
and criticism at the opening of last century, Carey always insisted that
he was a forerunner, breaking up the way for successors like Yates,
Wenger, and Rouse, who, in their turn, must be superseded by purely native
Tyndales and Luthers in the Church of India. He more than once deprecated
the talk of his having translated the Bible into forty languages and
dialects.16 As we proceed that will be apparent which he did with his
own hand, that which his colleagues accomplished, that which he revised
and edited both of their work and of the pundits', and that which he
corrected and printed for others at the Serampore press under the care of
Ward. It is to these four lines of work, which centred in him, as most of
them originally proceeded from his conception and advocacy, that the
assertion as to the forty translations is strictly applicable. The
Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, and Sanskrit translations were his own. The
Chinese was similarly the work of Marshman. The Hindi versions, in their
many dialects, and the Ooriya, were blocked out by his colleagues and the
pundits. He saw through the press the Hindostani, Persian, Malay, Tamil,
and other versions of the whole or portions of the Scriptures. He ceased
not, night and day, if by any means, with a loving catholicity, the Word
of God might be given to the millions.
Writing in 1904 on the
centenary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, Mr. George A.
Grierson, C.I.E., Ph.D., D.Litt., the head of the Linguistic Survey of
India, sums up authoritatively the work of Carey and his assistants. "The
great-hearted band of Serampore missionaries issued translations of the
Bible or of the New Testament in more than forty languages. Before them
the number of Protestant versions of the Bible in the speeches of India
could be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Dutch of Ceylon undertook
a Tamil New Testament in 1688, which was followed in 1715 by another
version from the pen of Ziegenbalg. The famous missionary, Schultze,
between 1727 and 1732 made a Telugu version which was never printed, and
later, between 1745 and 1758, he published at Halle a Hindostani
translation of the New Testament and of a portion of Genesis. A manuscript
version of portions of the Bible in Bengali was made by Thomas in 1791;
and then the great Serampore series began with Carey's Bengali New
Testament published in 1801. Most of these Serampore versions were, it is
true, first attempts and have been superseded by more accurate versions,
but the first step is always the most important one, and this was taken by
Carey and his brethren."
Carey's correspondent in this and purely
scholarly subjects was Dr. Ryland, an accomplished Hebraist and Biblical
critic for that day, at the head of the Bristol College. Carey's letters,
plentifully sprinkled with Hebrew and Greek, show the jealousy with which
he sought to convey the divine message accurately, and the unwearied sense
of responsibility under which he worked. Biblical criticism, alike as to
the original text and to the exegesis of the sacred writings, is so very
modern a science, that these letters have now only a historical interest.
But this communication to Ryland shows how he worked from the first:--
"CALCUTTA, 14th Dec. 1803.--We some time ago engaged
in an undertaking, of which we intended to say nothing until it was
accomplished; but an unforeseen providence made it necessary for us to
disclose it. It is as follows: About a year and a half ago, some
attempts were made to engage Mr. Gilchrist in the translation of the
Scriptures into the Hindostani language. By something or other it was
put by. The Persian was also at the same time much talked of, but given
up, or rather not engaged in. At this time several considerations
prevailed on us to set ourselves silently upon a translation into these
languages. We accordingly hired two moonshees to assist us in it, and
each of us took our share; Brother Marshman took Matthew and Luke;
Brother Ward, Mark and John; and myself the remaining part of the New
Testament into Hindostani. I undertook no part of the Persian; but,
instead thereof, engaged in translating it into Maharastra, commonly
called the Mahratta language, the person who assists me in the
Hindostani being a Mahratta. Brother Marshman has finished Matthew, and,
instead of Luke, has begun the Acts. Brother Ward has done part of John,
and I have done the Epistles, and about six chapters of the Revelation;
and have proceeded as far as the second epistle of the Corinthians in
the revisal: they have done a few chapters into Persian, and I a few
into Mahratta. Thus the matter stood, till a few days ago Mr. Buchanan
informed me that a military gentleman had translated the Gospels into
Hindostani and Persian, and had made a present of them to the College,
and that the College Council had voted the printing of them. This made
it necessary for me to say what we had been about; and had it not been
for this circumstance we should not have said anything till we had got
the New Testament at least pretty forward in printing. I am very glad
that Major Colebrooke has done it. We will gladly do what others do not
do, and wish all speed to those who do anything in this way. We have it
in our power, if our means would do for it, in the space of about
fifteen years to have the word of God translated and printed in all the
languages of the East. Our situation is such as to furnish us with the
best assistance from natives of the different countries. We can have
types of all the different characters cast here; and about 700 rupees
per month, part of which I hope we shall be able to furnish, would
complete the work. The languages are the Hindostani (Hindi), Maharastra,
Ooriya, Telinga, Bhotan, Burman, Chinese, Cochin Chinese, Tongkinese,
and Malay. On this great work we have fixed our eyes. Whether God will
enable us to accomplish it, or any considerable part of it, is
uncertain."
But all these advantages, his own genius for
languages, his unconquerable plodding directed by a divine motive, his
colleagues' co-operation, the encouragement of learned societies and the
public, and the number of pundits and moonshees increased by the College
of Fort William, would have failed to open the door of the East to the
sacred Scriptures had the philological key of the Sanskrit been wanting or
undiscovered. In the preface to his Sanskrit grammar, quoted by the
Quarterly Review with high approbation, Carey wrote that it gave
him the meaning of four out of every five words of the principal languages
of the whole people of India:--"The peculiar grammar of any one of these
may be acquired in a couple of months, and then the language lies open to
the student. The knowledge of four words in five enables him to read with
pleasure, and renders the acquisition of the few new words, as well as the
idiomatic expressions, a matter of delight rather than of labour. Thus the
Ooriya, though possessing a separate grammar and character, is so much
like the Bengali in the very expression that a Bengali pundit is almost
equal to the correction of an Orissa proof sheet; and the first time that
I read a page of Goojarati the meaning appeared so obvious as to render it
unnecessary to ask the pundit questions."
The mechanical apparatus
of types, paper, and printing seem to have been provided by the same
providential foresight as the intellectual and the spiritual. We have seen
how, when he was far enough advanced in his translation, Carey amid the
swamps of Dinapoor looked to England for press, type, paper, and printer.
He got the last, William Ward, a man of his own selection, worthy to be
his colleague. But he had hardly despatched his letter when he found or
made all the rest in Bengal itself. It was from the old press bought in
Calcutta, set up in Mudnabati, and removed to Serampore, that the first
edition of the Bengali New Testament was printed. The few rare and
venerable copies have now a peculiar bibliographic interest; the type and
the paper alike are coarse and blurred.
Sir Charles Wilkins, the
Caxton of India, had with his own hands cut the punches and cast the types
from which Halhed's Bengali grammar was printed at Hoogli in 1778. He
taught the art to a native blacksmith, Panchanan, who went to Serampore in
search of work just when Carey was in despair for a fount of the sacred
Devanagari type for his Sanskirt grammar, and for founts of the other
languages besides Bengali which had never been printed. They thus tell the
story in a Memoir Relative to the Translations, published in
1807:--
"It will be obvious that in the present state of things in
India it was in many instances necessary to cast new founts of types in
several of these languages. Happily for us and India at large Wilkins
had led the way in this department; and by persevering industry, the
value of which can scarcely be appreciated, under the greatest
disadvantages with respect to materials and workmen, had brought the
Bengali to a high degree of perfection. Soon after our settling at
Serampore the providence of God brought to us the very artist who had
wrought with Wilkins in that work, and in a great measure imbibed his
ideas. By his assistance we erected a letter-foundry; and although he is
now dead, he had so fully communicated his art to a number of others,
that they carry forward the work of type-casting, and even of cutting
the matrices, with a degree of accuracy which would not disgrace
European artists. These have cast for us two or three founts of Bengali;
and we are now employing them in casting a fount on a construction which
bids fair to diminish the expense of paper, and the size of the book at
least one-fourth, without affecting the legibility of the character. Of
the Devanagari character we have also cast an entire new fount, which is
esteemed the most beautiful of the kind in India. It consists of nearly
1000 different combinations of characters, so that the expense of
cutting the patterns only amounted to 1500 rupees, exclusive of metal
and casting.
Panchanan's apprentice, Monohur,
continued to make elegant founts of type in all Eastern languages for the
mission and for sale to others for more than forty years, becoming a
benefactor not only to literature but to Christian civilisation to an
extent of which he was unconscious, for he remained a Hindoo of the
blacksmith caste. In 1839, when he first went to India as a young
missionary, the Rev. James Kennedy17 saw him, as the present writer has
often since seen his successor, cutting the matrices or casting the type
for the Bibles, while he squatted below his favourite idol, under the
auspices of which alone he would work. Serampore continued down till 1860
to be the principal Oriental typefoundry of the East.18
"In the Orissa we have been compelled also to cast
a new fount of types, as none before existed in that character. The
fount consists of about 300 separate combinations, and the whole expense
of cutting and casting has amounted to at least 1000 rupees. The
character, though distinct, is of a moderate size, and will comprise the
whole New Testament in about 700 pages octavo, which is about a fourth
less than the Bengali. Although in the Mahratta country the Devanagari
character is well known to men of education, yet a character is current
among the men of business which is much smaller, and varies considerably
in form from the Nagari, though the number and power of the letters
nearly correspond. We have cast a fount in this character, in which we
have begun to print the Mahratta New Testament, as well as a Mahratta
dictionary. This character is moderate in size, distinct and beautiful.
It will comprise the New Testament in perhaps a less number of pages
than the Orissa. The expense of casting, etc., has been much the same.
We stand in need of three more founts; one in the Burman, another in the
Telinga and Kernata, and a third in the Seek's character. These, with
the Chinese characters, will enable us to go through the work. An
excellent and extensive fount of Persian we received from you, dear
brethren, last year."
Hardly
less service did the mission come to render to the manufacture of paper in
course of time, giving the name of Serampore to a variety known all over
India. At first Carey was compelled to print his Bengali Testament on a
dingy, porous, rough substance called Patna paper. Then he began to depend
on supplies from England, which in those days reached the press at
irregular times, often impeding the work, and was most costly. This was
not all. Native paper, whether mill or hand-made, being sized with rice
paste, attracted the bookworm and white ant, so that the first sheets of a
work which lingered in the press were sometimes devoured by these insects
before the last sheets were printed off. Carey used to preserve his most
valuable manuscripts by writing on arsenicated paper, which became of a
hideous yellow colour, though it is to this alone we owe the preservation
in the library of Serampore College of five colossal volumes of his
polyglot dictionary prepared for the Bible translation work. Many and long
were the experiments of the missionaries to solve the paper difficulty,
ending in the erection of a tread-mill on which relays of forty natives
reduced the raw material in the paper-engine, until one was accidentally
killed.
The enterprise of Mr. William Jones, who first worked the
Raneegunj coal-field, suggested the remedy in the employment of a
steam-engine. One of twelve-horse power was ordered from Messrs. Thwaites
and Rothwell of Bolton. This was the first ever erected in India, and it
was a purely missionary locomotive. The "machine of fire," as they called
it, brought crowds of natives to the mission, whose curiosity tried the
patience of the engineman imported to work it; while many a European who
had never seen machinery driven by steam came to study and to copy it. The
date was the 27th of March 1820, when "the engine went in reality this
day." From that time till 1865 Serampore became the one source of supply
for local as distinguished from imported and purely native hand-made
paper. Even the cartridges of Mutiny notoriety in 1857 were from this
factory, though it had long ceased to be connected with the mission.
Dr. Carey thus took stock of the translating enterprise in a
letter to Dr. Ryland:--
"22nd January 1808.--Last year may be reckoned among
the most important which this mission has seen--not for the numbers
converted among the natives, for they have been fewer than in some
preceding years, but for the gracious care which God has exercised
towards us. We have been enabled to carry on the translation and
printing of the Word of God in several languages. The printing is now
going on in six and the translation into six more. The Bengali is all
printed except from Judges vii. to the end of Esther; Sanskrit New
Testament to Acts xxvii.; Orissa to John xxi.; Mahratta, second edition,
to the end of Matthew; Hindostani (new version) to Mark v., and Matthew
is begun in Goojarati. The translation is nearly carried on to the end
of John in Chinese, Telinga Kurnata, and the language of the Seeks. It
is carried on to a pretty large extent in Persian and begun in Burman.
The whole Bible was printed in Malay at Batavia some years ago. The
whole is printed in Tamil, and the Syrian Bishop at Travancore is now
superintending a translation from Syriac into Malayala. I learnt this
week that the language of Kashmeer is a distinct language.
Four
years later, in another letter to Ryland, he takes us into his confidence
more fully, showing us not only his sacred workshop, but ingenuously
revealing his own humility and self-sacrifice:--"10th December
1811.--I have of late been much impressed with the vast importance of
laying a foundation for Biblical criticism in the East, by preparing
grammars of the different languages into which we have translated or may
translate the Bible. Without some such step, they who follow us will have
to wade through the same labour that I have, in order to stand merely upon
the same ground that I now stand upon. If, however, elementary books are
provided, the labour will be greatly contracted; and a person will be able
in a short time to acquire that which has cost me years of study and toil.
"I
have this day been to visit the most learned Hindoo now living; he
speaks only Sanskrit, is more than eighty years old, is acquainted with
the writings and has studied the sentiments of all their schools of
philosophy (usually called the Darshunas of the Veda). He tells me that
this is the sixteenth time that he has travelled from Rameshwaram to
Harhu (viz. from the extreme cape of the Peninsula to Benares). He was,
he says, near Madras when the English first took possession of it. This
man has given his opinion against the burning of women." "The necessity which lies upon me of acquiring so many
languages, obliges me to study and write out the grammar of each of
them, and to attend closely to their irregularities and peculiarities. I
have therefore already published grammars of three of them; namely, the
Sanskrit, the Bengali, and the Mahratta. To these I have resolved to add
grammars of the Telinga, Kurnata, Orissa, Punjabi, Kashmeeri, Goojarati,
Nepalese, and Assam languages. Two of these are now in the press, and I
hope to have two or three more of them out by the end of the next year.
The ardent scholar had twenty-three years of toil
before him in this happy work. But he did not know this, while each year
the labour increased, and the apprehension grew that he and his colleagues
might at any time be removed without leaving a trained successor. They
naturally looked first to the sons of the mission for translators as they
had already done for preachers.
"This may not only be useful in the way I have stated, but may
serve to furnish an answer to a question which has been more than once
repeated, 'How can these men translate into so great a number of
languages?' Few people know what may be done till they try, and
persevere in what they undertake.
"I am now printing a
dictionary of the Bengali, which will be pretty large, for I have got to
page 256, quarto, and am not near through the first letter. That letter,
however, begins more words than any two others.
"To secure the
gradual perfection of the translations, I have also in my mind, and
indeed have been long collecting materials for, An Universal
Dictionary of the Oriental languages derived from the Sanskrit. I
mean to take the Sanskrit, of course, as the groundwork, and to give the
different acceptations of every word, with examples of their
application, in the manner of Johnson, and then to give the synonyms in
the different languages derived from the Sanskrit, with the Hebrew and
Greek terms answering thereto; always putting the word derived from the
Sanskrit term first, and then those derived from other sources. I intend
always to give the etymology of the Sanskrit term, so that that of the
terms deduced from it in the cognate languages will be evident. This
work will be great, and it is doubtful whether I shall live to complete
it; but I mean to begin to arrange the materials, which I have been some
years collecting for this purpose, as soon as my Bengali dictionary is
finished. Should I live to accomplish this, and the translations in
hand, I think I can then say, 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart
in peace.'"
To Dr. Carey personally, however,
the education of a young missionary specially fitted to be his successor,
as translator and editor of the translations, was even more important.
Such a man was found in William Yates, born in 1792, and in the county,
Leicestershire, in which Carey brought the Baptist mission to the birth.
Yates was in his early years also a shoemaker, and member of Carey's old
church in Harvey Lane, when under the great Robert Hall, who said to the
youth's father, "Your son, sir, will be a great scholar and a good
preacher, and he is a holy young man." In 1814 he became the last of the
young missionaries devoted to the cause by Fuller, soon to pass away,
Ryland, and Hall. Yates had not been many months at Serampore when, with
the approval of his brethren, Carey wrote to Fuller, on 17th May 1815:--"I
am much inclined to associate him with myself in the translations. My
labour is greater than at any former period. We have now translations of
the Bible going forward in twenty-seven languages, all of which are in the
press except two or three. The labour of correcting and revising all of
them lies on me." By September we find Yates writing:--"Dr. Carey sends
all the Bengali proofs to me to review. I read them over, and if there is
anything I do not understand, or think to be wrong, I mark it. We then
converse over it, and if it is wrong, he alters it; but if not, he shows
me the reason why it is right, and thus will initiate me into the
languages as fast as I can learn them. He wishes me to begin the Hindi
very soon. Since I have been here I have read three volumes in Bengali,
and they have but six of consequence in prose. There are abundance in
Sanskrit." "Dr. Carey has treated me with the greatest affection and
kindness, and told me he will give me every information he can, and do
anything in his power to promote my happiness." What Baruch was to the
prophet Jeremiah, that Yates might have been to Carey, who went so far in
urging him to remain for life in Serampore as to say, "if he did not
accept the service it would be, in his judgment, acting against
Providence, and the blessing of God was not to be expected." Yates threw
in his lot with the younger men who, in Calcutta after Fuller's death,
began the Society's as distinct from the Serampore mission. If Carey was
the Wyclif and Tyndale, Yates was the Coverdale of the Bengali and
Sanskrit Bible. Wenger, their successor, was worthy of both. Bengal still
waits for the first native revision of the great work which these
successive pioneers have gradually improved. When shall Bengal see its own
Luther?
The Bengali Bible was the first as it was the most
important of the translations. The province, or lieutenant-governorship
then had the same area as France, and contained more than double its
population, or eighty millions. Of the three principal vernaculars,
Bengali is spoken by forty-five millions of Hindoos and Mohammedans. It
was for all the natives of Bengal and of India north of the Dekhan
("south") tableland, but especially for the Bengali-speaking people, that
William Carey created a literary language a century ago.
The first
Bengali version of the whole New Testament Carey translated from the
original Greek before the close of 1796. The only English commentary used
was the Family Expositor of Doddridge, published in 1738, and then
the most critical in the language. Four times he revised the manuscript,
with a Greek concordance in his hand, and he used it not only with Ram
Basu by his side, the most accomplished of early Bengali scholars, but
with the natives around him of all classes. By 1800 Ward had arrived as
printer, the press was perfected at Serampore, and the result of seven
years of toil appeared in February 1801, in the first edition of 2000
copies, costing £612. The printing occupied nine months. The type was set
up by Ward and Carey's son Felix with their own hands; "for about a month
at first we had a Brahman compositor, but we were quite weary of him. We
kept four pressmen constantly employed." A public subscription had been
opened for the whole Bengali Bible at Rs. 32, or £4 a copy as exchange
then was, and nearly fifty copies had been at once subscribed for. It was
this edition which immediately led to Carey's appointment to the College
of Fort William, and it was that appointment which placed Carey in a
position, philological and financial, to give the Bible to the peoples of
the farther East in their own tongue.
Some loving memories cluster
round the first Bengali version of the New Testament which it is well to
collect. On Tuesday, 18th March 1800, Ward's journal19 records: "Brother
Carey took an impression at the press of the first page in Matthew." The
translator was himself the pressman. As soon as the whole of this Gospel
was ready, 500 copies of it were struck off for immediate circulation,
"which we considered of importance as containing a complete life of the
Redeemer." Four days after an advertisement in the official Calcutta
Gazette, announcing that the missionaries had established a press at
Serampore and were printing the Bible in Bengali, roused Lord Wellesley,
who had fettered the press in British India. Mr. Brown was able to inform
the Governor-General that this very Serampore press had refused to print a
political attack on the English Government, and that it was intended for
the spiritual instruction only of the natives. This called forth the
assurance from that liberal statesman that he was personally favourable to
the conversion of the heathen. When he was further told that such an
Oriental press would be invaluable to the College of Fort William, he not
only withdrew his opposition but made Carey first teacher of Bengali. It
was on the 7th February 1801 that the last sheet with the final
corrections was put into Carey's hands. When a volume had been bound it
was reverently offered to God by being placed on the Communion-table of
the chapel, and the mission families and the new-made converts gathered
around it with solemn thanksgiving to God led by Krishna Pal. Carey
preached from the words (Col. iii. 11) "Let the Word of Christ dwell in
you richly in all wisdom." The centenary was celebrated in Calcutta in
1901, under Dr. Rouse, whose fine scholarship had just revised the
translation.
When the first copies reached England, Andrew Fuller
sent one to the second Earl Spencer, the peer who had used the wealth of
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, to collect the great library at Althorp.
Carey had been a poor tenant of his, though the Earl knew it not. When the
Bengali New Testament reached him, with its story, he sent a cheque for
£50 to help to translate the Old Testament, and he took care that a copy
should be presented to George III., as by his own request. Mr. Bowyer was
received one morning at Windsor, and along with the volume presented an
address expressing the desire that His Majesty might live to see its
principles universally prevail throughout his Eastern dominions. On this
the lord in waiting whispered a doubt whether the book had come through
the proper channel. At once the king replied that the Board of Control had
nothing to do with it, and turning to Mr. Bowyer said, "I am greatly
pleased to find that any of my subjects are employed in this manner."
This now rare volume, to be found on the shelves of the Serampore
College Library, where it leads the host of the Carey translations, is
coarse and unattractive in appearance compared with its latest successors.
In truth the second edition, which appeared in 1806, was almost a new
version. The criticism of his colleagues and others, especially of a ripe
Grecian like Dr. Marshman, the growth of the native church, and his own
experience as a Professor of Sanskrit and Marathi as well as Bengali, gave
Carey new power in adapting the language to the divine ideas of which he
made it the medium. But the first edition was not without its
self-evidencing power. Seventeen years after, when the mission extended to
the old capital of Dacca, there were found several villages of Hindoo-born
peasants who had given up idol-worship, were renowned for their
truthfulness, and, as searching for a true teacher come from God, called
themselves "Satya-gooroos." They traced their new faith to a much-worn
book kept in a wooden box in one of their villages. No one could say
whence it had come; all they knew was that they had possessed it for many
years. It was Carey's first Bengali version of the New Testament of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. In the wide and elastic bounds of
Hindooism, and even, as we shall see, amid fanatical Mussulmans beyond the
frontier, the Bible, dimly understood without a teacher, has led to
puritan sects like this, as to earnest inquirers like the chamberlain of
Queen Candace.
The third edition of the Bengali Testament was
published in 1811 in folio for the use of the native congregations by that
time formed. The fourth, consisting of 5000 copies, appeared in 1816, and
the eighth in 1832. The venerable scholar, like Columba at Iona over the
thirty-fourth psalm, and Baeda at Jarrow over the sixth chapter of John's
Gospel, said as he corrected the last sheet--the last after forty years'
faithful and delighted toil: "My work is done; I have nothing more to do
but to wait the will of the Lord." The Old Testament from the Hebrew
appeared in portions from 1802 to 1809. Such was the ardour of the
translator, that he had finished the correction of his version of the
first chapter of Genesis in January 1794. When he read it to two pundits
from Nuddea, he told Fuller in his journal of that month they seemed much
pleased with the account of the creation, but they objected to the
omission of patala, their imaginary place beneath the earth, which
they thought should have been mentioned. At this early period Carey saw
the weakness of Hindooism as a pretended revelation, from its
identification with false physics, just as Duff was to see and use it
afterwards with tremendous effect, and wrote:--"There is a necessity of
explaining to them several circumstances relative to geography and
chronology, as they have many superstitious opinions on those subjects
which are closely connected with their systems of idolatry." The Bengali
Bible was the result of fifteen years' sweet toil, in which Marshman read
the Greek and Carey the Bengali; every one of their colleagues examined
the proof sheets, and Carey finally wrote with his own pen the whole of
the five octavo volumes. In the forty years of his missionary career Carey
prepared and saw through the press five editions of the Old Testament and
eight editions of the New in Bengali.
The Sanskrit version was
translated from the original, and written out by the toiling scholar
himself. Sir William Jones is said to have been able to secure his first
pundit's help only by paying him Rs. 500 a month, or £700 a year. Carey
engaged and trained his many pundits at a twentieth of that sum. He well
knew that the Brahmans would scorn a book in the language of the common
people. "What," said one who was offered the Hindi version, "even if the
books should contain divine knowledge, they are nothing to us. The
knowledge of God contained in them is to us as milk in a vessel of dog's
skin, utterly polluted." But, writes the annalist of Biblical Translations
in India, Carey's Sanskrit version was cordially received by the Brahmans.
Destroyed in the fire in 1812, the Old Testament historical books were
again translated, and appeared in 1815. In 1827 the aged saint had
strength to bring out the first volume of a thorough revision, and to
leave the manuscript of the second volume, on his death, as a legacy to
his successors, Yates and Wenger. Against Vedas and Upanishads, Brahmanas
and Epics, he set the Sanskrit Bible.
The whole number of
completely translated and published versions of the sacred Scriptures
which Carey sent forth was twenty-eight. Of these seven included the whole
Bible, and twenty-one contained the books of the New Testament. Each
translation has a history, a spiritual romance of its own. Each became
almost immediately a silent but effectual missionary to the peoples of
Asia, as well as the scholarly and literary pioneer of those later
editions and versions from which the native churches of farther Asia
derive the materials of their lively growth.
The Ooriya version
was almost the first to be undertaken after the Bengali, to which language
it bears the same relation as rural Scotch to English, though it has a
written character of its own. What is now the Orissa division of Bengal,
separating it from Madras to the south-west, was added to the empire in
1803. This circumstance, and the fact that its Pooree district, after
centuries of sun-worship and then shiva-worship, had become the high-place
of the vaishnava cult of Jaganath and his car, which attracted and often
slew hundreds of thousands of pilgrims every year, led Carey to prepare at
once for the press the Ooriya Bible. The chief pundit, Mritunjaya, skilled
in both dialects, first adapted the Bengali version to the language of the
Ooriyas, which was his own. Carey then took the manuscript, compared it
with the original Greek, and corrected it verse by verse. The New
Testament was ready in 1809, and the Old Testament in 1815, the whole in
four volumes. Large editions were quickly bought up and circulated. These
led to the establishment of the General Baptist Society's missionaries at
Cuttak, the capital.
In 1814 the Serampore Bible translation
college, as we may call it, began the preparation of the New Testament in
Maghadi, another of the languages allied to the Bengali, and derived from
the Sanskrit through the Pali, because that was the vernacular of Buddhism
in its original seat; an edition of 1000 copies appeared in 1824. It was
intended to publish a version in the Maithili language of Bihar, which has
a literature stretching back to the fourteenth century, that every class
might have the Word of God in their own dialect. But Carey's literary
enthusiasm and scholarship had by this time done so much to develop and
extend the power of Bengali proper, that it had begun to supersede all
such dialects, except Ooriya and the northern vernaculars of the valley of
the Brahmapootra. In 1810 the Serampore press added the Assamese New
Testament to its achievements. In 1819 the first edition appeared, in 1826
the province became British, and in 1832 Carey had the satisfaction of
issuing the Old Testament, and setting apart Mr. Rae, a Scottish soldier,
who had settled there, as the first missionary at Gowhatti. To these must
be added, as in the Bengali character though non-Aryan languages, versions
in Khasi and Manipoori, the former for the democratic tribes of the Khasia
hills among whom the Welsh Calvinists have since worked, and the latter
for the curious Hindoo snake-people on the border of Burma, who have
taught Europe the game of polo.
Another immediate successor of the
Bengali translation was the Marathi, of which also Carey was professor in
the College of Fort William. By 1804 he was himself hard at work on this
version, by 1811 the first edition of the New Testament appeared, and by
1820 the Old Testament left the press. It was in a dialect peculiar to
Nagpoor, and was at first largely circulated by Lieutenant Moxon in the
army there. In 1812 Carey sent the missionary Aratoon to Bombay and Surat
just after Henry Martyn had written that the only Christian in the city
who understood his evangelical sermon was a ropemaker just arrived from
England. At the same time he was busy with a version in the dialect of the
Konkan, the densely-peopled coast district to the south of Bombay city,
inhabited chiefly by the ablest Brahmanical race in India. In 1819 the New
Testament appeared in this translation, having been under preparation at
Serampore for eleven years. Thus Carey sought to turn to Christ the twelve
millions of Hindoos who, from Western India above and below the great
coast-range known as the Sahyadri or "delectable" mountains, had nearly
wrested the whole peninsula from the Mohammedans, and had almost
anticipated the life-giving rule of the British, first at Panipat and then
as Assye. Meanwhile new missionaries had been taking possession of those
western districts where the men of Serampore had sowed the first seed and
reaped the first fruits. The charter of 1813 made it possible for the
American Missionaries to land there, and for the local Bible Society to
spring into existence. Dr. John Wilson and his Scottish colleagues
followed them. Carey and his brethren welcomed these and retired from that
field, confining themselves to providing, during the next seven years, a
Goojarati version for the millions of Northern Bombay, including the
hopeful Parsees, and resigning that, too, to the London Missionary Society
after issuing the New Testament in 1820.
Mr. Christopher Anderson
justly remarks, in his Annals of the English Bible, published half
a century ago:--"Time will show, and in a very singular manner, that every
version, without exception, which came from Carey's hands, has a value
affixed to it which the present generation, living as it were too near an
object, is not yet able to estimate or descry. Fifty years hence the
character of this extraordinary and humble man will be more correctly
appreciated."
In none of the classes of languages derived from the
Sanskrit was the zeal of Carey and his associates so remarkable as in the
Hindi. So early as 1796 he wrote of this the most widely extended
offspring of the Sanskrit:--"I have acquired so much of the Hindi as to
converse in it and preach for some time intelligibly...It is the current
language of all the west from Rajmahal to Delhi, and perhaps farther. With
this I can be understood nearly all over Hindostan." By the time that he
issued the sixth memoir of the translations Chamberlain's experiences in
North-Western India led Carey to write that he had ascertained the
existence of twenty dialects of Hindi, with the same vocabulary but
different sets of terminations. The Bruj or Brijbhasa Gospels were
finished in 1813, two years after Chamberlain had settled in Agra, and the
New Testament was completed nine years after. This version of the Gospels
led the Brahman priest, Anand Masih, to Christ. In their eagerness for a
copy of the Old Testament, which appeared in 1818, many Sepoys brought
testimonials from their commanding officers, and in one year it led
eighteen converts to Christ. The other Hindi dialects, in which the whole
New Testament or the Gospels appeared, will be found at page 177 {see
footnote number 16}. The parent Hindi translation was made by Carey with
his own hand from the original languages between 1802 and 1807, and ran
through many large editions till Mr. Chamberlain's was preferred by Carey
himself in 1819.
We may pass over the story of the Dravidian
versions, the Telugoo20 New Testament and Pentateuch, and the Kanarese.
Nor need we do more than refer to the Singhalese, "derived from the
previous labours of Dr. Carey" by Tolfrey, the Persian, Malayalam, and
other versions made by others, but edited or carefully carried through the
press by Carey. The wonderful tale of his Bible work is well illustrated
by a man who, next to the Lawrences, was the greatest Englishman who has
governed the Punjab frontier, the hero of Mr. Ruskin's book, A Knight's
Faith. In that portion of his career which Sir Herbert Edwardes gave
to the world under the title of A Year on the Punjab Frontier in
1848-49, and in which he describes his bloodless conquest of the wild
valley of Bunnoo, we find this gem embedded. The writer was at the time in
the Gundapoor country, of which Kulachi is the trade-centre between the
Afghan pass of Ghwalari and Dera Ismail Kan, where the dust of Sir Henry
Durand now lies:--
"A highly interesting circumstance connected with the Indian
trade came under my notice. Ali Khan, Gundapoor, the uncle of the
present chief, Gooldâd Khan, told me he could remember well, as a youth,
being sent by his father and elder brother with a string of Cabul horses
to the fair of Hurdwâr, on the Ganges. He also showed me a Pushtoo
version of the Bible, printed at Serampore in 1818, which he said had
been given him thirty years before at Hurdwâr by an English gentleman,
who told him to 'take care of it, and neither fling it into the fire nor
the river; but hoard it up against the day when the British should be
rulers of his country!' Ali Khan said little to anybody of his
possessing this book, but put it carefully by in a linen cover, and
produced it with great mystery when I came to settle the revenue of his
nephew's country, 'thinking that the time predicted by the Englishman
had arrived!' The only person, I believe, to whom he had shown the
volume was a Moolluh, who read several passages in the Old Testament,
and told Ali Khan 'it was a true story, and was all about their own
Muhommudan prophets, Father Moses and Father Noah.'
Hurdwâr, as the spot at which the
Ganges debouches into the plains, is the scene of the greatest pilgrim
gathering in India, especially every twelfth year. Then three millions of
people used to assemble, and too often carried, all over Asia, cholera
which extended to Europe. The missionaries made this, like most pilgrim
resorts, a centre of preaching and Bible circulation, and doubtless it was
from Thompson, Carey's Missionary at Delhi, that this copy of the Pushtoo
Bible was received. It was begun by Dr. Leyden, and continued for seven
years by the same Afghan maulavee under Carey, in the Arabic character.
The Punjabi Bible, nearly complete, issued first in 1815, had become so
popular by 1820 as to lead Carey to report of the Sikhs that no one of the
nations of India had discovered a stronger desire for the Scriptures than
this hardy race. At Amritsar and Lahore "the book of Jesus is spoken of,
is read, and has caused a considerable stir in the minds of the people." A
Thug, asked how he could have committed so many murders, pointed to it and
said, "If I had had this book I could not have done it." A fakeer, forty
miles from Lodiana, read the book, founded the community of worshippers of
the Sachi Pitè Isa, and suffered much persecution in a native
State.
"I examined
the book with great interest. It was not printed in the Persian
character, but the common Pushtoo language of Afghanistan; and was the
only specimen I had ever seen of Pushtoo reduced to writing. The
accomplishment of such a translation was a highly honourable proof of
the zeal and industry of the Serampore mission; and should these pages
ever meet the eye of Mr. John Marshman, of Serampore,21 whose own pen is
consistently guided by a love of civil order and religious truth, he may
probably be able to identify 'the English gentleman' who, thirty-two
years ago on the banks of the Ganges, at the then frontier of British
India, gave to a young Afghan chief, from beyond the distant Indus, a
Bible in his own barbarous tongue, and foresaw the day when the
followers of the 'Son of David' should extend their dominion to the
'Throne of Solomon.'"
When Felix Carey returned to Serampore in 1812 to print his
Burmese version of the Gospel of Matthew and his Burmese grammar, his
father determined to send the press at which they were completed to
Rangoon. The three missionaries despatched with it a letter to the king of
Ava, commending to his care "their beloved brethren, who from love to his
majesty's subjects had voluntarily gone to place themselves under his
protection, while they translated the Bible, the Book of Heaven, which was
received and revered" by all the countries of Europe and America as "the
source whence all the knowledge of virtue and religion was drawn." The
king at once ordered from Serampore a printing-press, like that at
Rangoon, for his own palace at Ava, with workmen to use it. In this Carey
saw the beginning of a mission in the Burman capital, but God had other
designs which the sons and daughters of America, following Judson first of
all, are still splendidly developing, from Rangoon to Kareng-nee, Siam,
and China. The ship containing the press sank in the Rangoon river, and
the first Burmese war soon followed.
Three months after the
complete and magnificent plan of translating the Bible into all the
languages of the far East, which the assistance of his two colleagues and
the college of Fort William led Carey to form, had been laid before Fuller
in Northamptonshire, the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in
London. Joseph Hughes, the Nonconformist who was its first secretary, had
been moved by the need of the Welsh for the Bible in their own tongue. But
the ex-Governor-General, Lord Teignmouth, became its first president, and
the Serampore translators at once turned for assistance to the new
organisation whose work Carey had individually been doing for ten years at
the cost of his two associates and himself. The catholic Bible Society at
once asked Carey's old friend, Mr. Udny, then a member of the Government
in Calcutta, to form a corresponding committee there of the three
missionaries--their chaplain friends, Brown and Buchanan, and himself. The
chaplains delayed the formation of the committee till 1809, but liberally
helped meanwhile in the circulation of the other appeals issued from
Serampore, and even made the proposal which resulted in Dr. Marshman's
wonderful version of the Bible in Chinese and Ward's improvements in
Chinese printing. To the principal tributary sovereigns of India Dr.
Buchanan sent copies of the vernacular Scriptures already published.
From 1809 till 1830, or practically through the rest of Carey's
life, the co-operation of Serampore and the Bible Society was honourable
to both. Carey loyally clung to it when in 1811, under the spell of Henry
Martyn's sermon on Christian India, the chaplains established the Calcutta
Auxiliary Bible Society in order to supersede its corresponding committee.
In the Serampore press the new auxiliary, like the parent Society, found
the cheapest and best means of publishing editions of the New Testament in
Singhalese, Malayalam, and Tamil. The press issued also the Persian New
Testament, first of the Romanist missionary, Sebastiani--"though it be not
wholly free from imperfections, it will doubtless do much good," wrote Dr.
Marshman to Fuller--and then of Henry Martyn, whose assistant, Sabat, was
trained at Serampore. Those three of Serampore had a Christ-like
tolerance, which sprang from the divine charity of their determination to
live only that the Word of God might sound out through Asia. When in 1830
this auxiliary--which had at first sought to keep all missionaries out of
its executive in order to conciliate men like Sydney Smith's brother, the
Advocate-General of Bengal--refused to use the translations of Carey and
Yates, and inclined to an earlier version of Ellerton, because of the
translation or transliteration of the Greek words for "baptism," these two
scholars acted thus, as described by the Bible Society's annalist--they,
"with a liberality which does them honour, permitted the use of their
respective versions of the Bengali Scriptures, with such alterations as
were deemed needful in the disputed word for 'baptism,' they being
considered in no way parties to such alterations." From first to last the
British and Foreign Bible Society, to use its own language, "had the
privilege of aiding the Serampore brethren by grants, amounting to not
less than £13,500." Of this £1475 had been raised by Mr. William Hey,
F.R.S., a surgeon at Leeds, who had been so moved by the translation
memoir of 1816 as to offer £500 for the publication of a thousand copies
of every approved first translation of the New Testament into any dialect
of India. It was with this assistance that most of the Hindi and the
Pushtoo and Punjabi versions were produced.
The cold season of
1811-12 was one ever to be remembered. Death entered the home of each of
the staff of seven missionaries and carried off wife or children. An
earthquake of unusual violence alarmed the natives. Dr. Carey had buried a
grandson, and was at his weekly work in the college at Calcutta. The sun
had just set on the evening of the 11th March 1812, and the native
typefounders, compositors, pressmen, binders, and writers had gone. Ward
alone lingered in the waning light at his desk settling an account with a
few servants. His two rooms formed the north end of the long
printing-office. The south rooms were filled with paper and printed
materials. Close beyond was the paper-mill. The Bible-publishing
enterprise was at its height. Fourteen founts of Oriental types, new
supplies of Hebrew, Greek, and English types, a vast stock of paper from
the Bible Society, presses, priceless manuscripts of dictionaries,
grammars, and translations, and, above all, the steel punches of the
Eastern letters--all were there, with the deeds and account-books of the
property, and the iron safe containing notes and rupees. Suffocating smoke
burst from the long type-room into the office. Rushing through it to
observe the source of the fire, he was arrested at the southern rooms by
the paper store. Returning with difficulty and joined by Marshman and the
natives, he had every door and window closed, and then mounting the south
roof, he had water poured through it upon the burning mass for four hours,
with the most hopeful prospect of arresting the ruin. While he was busy
with Marshman in removing the papers in the north end some one opened a
window, when the air set the entire building on flame. By midnight the
roof fell in along its whole length, and the column of fire leapt up
towards heaven. With "solemn serenity" the members of the mission family
remained seated in front of the desolation.
The ruins were still
smoking when next evening Dr. Carey arrived from Calcutta, which was
ringing with the sad news. The venerable scholar had suffered most, for
his were the manuscripts; the steel punches were found uninjured. The Sikh
and Telugoo grammars and ten Bible versions in the press were gone. Second
editions of Confucius. A Dissertation on the Chinese Language, and
of Ward on the Hindoos, and smaller works were destroyed. The
translation of the Ramayana, on which he and Marshman had been busy
for a year, was stopped for ever; fifty years after the present writer
came upon some charred sheets of the fourth volume, which had been on the
press and rescued. The Circular Letter for April 1812 is printed on
paper scorched at the edge. Worst of all was the loss of that polyglot
dictionary of all the languages derived from the Sanskrit which, if Carey
had felt any of this world's ambition, would have perpetuated his name in
the first rank of philologists.
With the delicacy which always
marked him Dr. Marshman had himself gone down to Calcutta next morning to
break the news to Carey, who received it with choking utterance. The two
then called on the friendly chaplain, Thomason, who burst into tears. When
the afternoon tide enabled the three to reach Serampore, after a two
hours' hard pull at the flood, they found Ward rejoicing. He had been all
day clearing away the rubbish, and had just discovered the punches and
matrices unharmed. The five presses too were untouched. He had already
opened out a long warehouse nearer the river-shore, the lease of which had
fallen in to them, and he had already planned the occupation of that
uninviting place in which the famous press of Serampore and, at the last,
the Friend of India weekly newspaper found a home till 1875. The
description of the scene and of its effect on Carey by an eye-witness like
Thomason has a value of its own:--
"The year 1812 was ushered in by an earthquake which was
preceded by a loud noise; the house shook; the oil in the lamps on the
walls was thrown out; the birds made a frightful noise; the natives ran
from their houses, calling on the names of their gods; the sensation is
most awful; we read the forty-sixth Psalm. This fearful prodigy was
succeeded by that desolating disaster, the Serampore fire. I could
scarcely believe the report; it was like a blow on the head which
stupefies. I flew to Serampore to witness the desolation. The scene was
indeed affecting. The immense printing-office, two hundred feet long and
fifty broad, reduced to a mere shell. The yard covered with burnt quires
of paper, the loss in which article was immense. Carey walked with me
over the smoking ruins. The tears stood in his eyes. 'In one short
evening,' said he, 'the labours of years are consumed. How unsearchable
are the ways of God! I had lately brought some things to the utmost
perfection of which they seemed capable, and contemplated the missionary
establishment with perhaps too much self-congratulation. The Lord has
laid me low, that I may look more simply to Him.' Who could stand in
such a place, at such a time, with such a man, without feelings of sharp
regret and solemn exercise of mind. I saw the ground strewed with
half-consumed paper, on which in the course of a very few months the
words of life would have been printed. The metal under our feet amidst
the ruins was melted into misshapen lumps--the sad remains of beautiful
types consecrated to the service of the sanctuary. All was smiling and
promising a few hours before--now all is vanished into smoke or
converted into rubbish! Return now to thy books, regard God in all thou
doest. Learn Arabic with humility. Let God be exalted in all thy plans,
and purposes, and labours; He can do without thee."
Carey
himself thus wrote of the disaster to Dr. Ryland:--"25th March
1812.--The loss is very great, and will long be severely felt; yet I can
think of a hundred circumstances which would have made it much more
difficult to bear. The Lord has smitten us, he had a right to do so, and
we deserve his corrections. I wish to submit to His sovereign will, nay,
cordially to acquiesce therein, and to examine myself rigidly to see what
in me has contributed to this evil.
"I now, however, turn to the bright side; and here I might
mention what still remains to us, and the merciful circumstances which
attend even this stroke of God's rod; but I will principally notice what
will tend to cheer the heart of every one who feels for the cause of
God. Our loss, so far as I can see, is reparable in a much shorter time
than I should at first have supposed. The Tamil fount of types was the
first that we began to recast. I expect it will be finished by the end
of this week, just a fortnight after it was begun. The next will be the
small Devanagari, for the Hindostani Scriptures, and next the larger for
the Sanskrit. I hope this will be completed in another month. The other
founts, viz., Bengali, Orissa, Sikh, Telinga, Singhalese, Mahratta,
Burman, Kashmeerian, Arabic, Persian, and Chinese, will follow in order,
and will probably be finished in six or seven months, except the
Chinese, which will take more than a year to replace it. I trust,
therefore, that we shall not be greatly delayed. Our English works will
be delayed the longest; but in general they are of the least importance.
Of MSS. burnt I have suffered the most; that is, what was actually
prepared by me, and what owes its whole revision for the press to me,
comprise the principal part of the MSS. consumed. The ground must be
trodden over again, but no delay in printing need arise from that. The
translations are all written out first by pundits in the different
languages, except the Sanskrit which is dictated by me to an amanuensis.
The Sikh, Mahratta, Hindostani, Orissa, Telinga, Assam, and Kurnata are
re-translating in rough by pundits who have been long accustomed to
their work, and have gone over the ground before. I follow them in
revise, the chief part of which is done as the sheets pass through the
press, and is by far the heaviest part of the work. Of the Sanskrit only
the second book of Samuel and the first book of Kings were lost.
Scarcely any of the Orissa, and none of the Kashmeerian or of the Burman
MSS. were lost--copy for about thirty pages of my Bengali dictionary,
the whole copy of a Telinga grammar, part of the copy of the grammar of
Punjabi or Sikh language, and all the materials which I had been long
collecting for a dictionary of all the languages derived from the
Sanskrit. I hope, however, to be enabled to repair the loss, and to
complete my favourite scheme, if my life be prolonged."
Little did these simple scholars, all absorbed in their work,
dream that this fire would prove to be the means of making them and their
work famous all over Europe and America as well as India. Men of every
Christian school, and men interested only in the literary and secular side
of their enterprise, had their active sympathy called out. The mere money
loss, at the exchange of the day, was not under ten thousand pounds. In
fifty days this was raised in England and Scotland alone, till Fuller,
returning from his last campaign, entered the room of his committee,
declaring "we must stop the contributions." In Greenock, for instance,
every place of worship on one Sunday collected money. In the United States
Mr. Robert Ralston, a Presbyterian, a merchant of Philadelphia, who as
Carey's correspondent had been the first American layman to help missions
to India, and Dr. Staughton, who had taken an interest in the formation of
the Society in 1792 before he emigrated, had long assisted the translation
work, and now that Judson was on his way out they redoubled their
exertions. In India Thomason's own congregation sent the missionaries
£800, and Brown wrote from his dying bed a message of loving help. The
newspapers of Calcutta caught the enthusiasm; one leading article
concluded with the assurance that the Serampore press would, "like the
phoenix of antiquity, rise from its ashes, winged with new strength, and
destined, in a lofty and long-enduring flight, widely to diffuse the
benefits of knowledge throughout the East." The day after the fire ceased
to smoke Monohur was at the task of casting type from the lumps of the
molten metal.
In two months after the first intelligence Fuller
was able to send as "feathers of the phoenix" slips of sheets of the Tamil
Testament, printed from these types, to the towns and churches which had
subscribed. Every fortnight a fount was cast; in a month all the native
establishment was at work night and day. In six months the whole loss in
Oriental types was repaired. The Ramayana version and Sanskrit polyglot
dictionary were never resumed. But of the Bible translations and grammars,
Carey and his two heroic brethren wrote:--"We found, on making the trial,
that the advantages in going over the same ground a second time were so
great that they fully counter-balanced the time requisite to be devoted
thereto in a second translation." The fire, in truth, the cause of which
was never discovered, and insurance against which did not exist in India,
had given birth to revised editions.