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 by a Hindoo blacksmith-The first manufacture of paper and steam-engine in the East-Carey takes stock of the translation work at the opening of 1808—In his workshop-A seminary of Bible translators-William Yates, shoemaker, the Coverdale of the Bengali Bible-Wenger-A Bengali Luther wanted-Carey's Bengali Bible-How the New Testament was printed-The first copy offered to God-Reception of the volume by Lord Spencer and George III.-Self-evidencing power of the first edition-The Bible in Ooriya-In Maghadi, Assamese, Khasi, and Manipoori-Marathi, Konkani, and Goojarati versions-The translation into Hindi and its many dialects-The Dravidian translationsTale of the Pushtoo Bible-The Sikhs and the Bible-The first Burman version and press-The British and Foreign Bible Society— Deaths, earthquake, and fire in 1812-Destruction of the pressThomason's description of the smoking ruins-Carey's heroism as to his manuscripts-Enthusiastic sympathy of India and Christendom -The phoenix and its feathers.

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

1804]

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211

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 mastered 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. Wiclif 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 writing letters is stolen from the work of transcribing the Scriptures into the Bengali language."

When stripped of the extravagance of statement into which they have grown in the course of a century in the missionary periodicals and on the popular platforms of England, the facts are more remarkable than the pious myth which has accreted round them. From no mere humility, but with an accurate judgment in the state of scholarship and criticism at the end of last century, Carey always insisted that he was a forerunner, breaking up the way for successors like Yates and Wenger, who, in their turn, must be superseded by purely native Tyndales and Luthers in the Church of India. He never justified, he more than once deprecated, the talk of his having trans

1801-32] HIS THIRTY-SIX BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

213

As we

lated the Bible into forty languages and dialects.1 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

First

1 THIRTY-SIX TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE,
MADE AND EDITED BY DR. CAREY AT SERAMPORE.

Published in

1801. BENGALI-New Testament; Old Testament in 1802-9.

1820.

Kashmeeri-New Testament; and Old Testament to 2d
Book of Kings.

1820-26. Dogri-New Testament only.

pundits', and that which he corrected and printed for others at his own 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. His home 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 from Carey 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

First Published in

1819. PUSHTOO-New Test. and Old Test. Historical Books.