Life of William Carey by George Smith - The Jesus Army

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.
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