the legacy of henry martyn to the study of india's muslims and islam ...

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with a brief discussion of conversion from Islam to Christianity among Muslim circles influenced by Martyn and Muir. But before beginning I would like to mention the work of those responsible for the Henry Martyn Centre Westminster College in recently collecting together listing some widely scattered concerning Henry finish It is unlikely now that the original correspondence, which his nineteenth century biographers and editors based their publications of his journals and letters, will ever re-emerge. However, great deal has now been recovered from other archives and from the correspondence of his colleagues and friends. I say this feelingly for most of my own work Martyn was done Martyn. thirty years ago while attempting to establish a pre-history for a study of Muslim relations with missionaries later the nineteenth century. Returning only recently to this subject, I certainly find that it now possible to probe some hitherto unanswerable questions about Martyn with much more hope of finding answers as a result of the Centre's activities. would also wish to mention two previous lectures in this series (unfortunately I was not able to attend the third). Brian Stanley's deconstruction of a popular image of Martyn that had been somewhat uncritically reverenced in some tradition has helped to distinguish mercilessly self-reproachful lonely 'sinner' of his own journals, from the rather companionable, often 'cheerful' priest frequently encountered in the diaries of others. I owe much too to Sebastian Kim's examination in his own lecture of some later translation programmes Asia, for I agree with those who consider evangelical most lasting legacy was his multi-lingual translations of the Bible for Muslim readers, though with effects that I hope my lecture will show, that were not always what he had intended. Because I come last in this series of Martyn's I am going assume that the details of the life of Henry Martyn are already well known to you. PART I: MARTYN IN INDIA AND PERSIA: Considering his subsequent reputation as a 'missionary to Mohammedans', lectures Martyn's opportunities for contact with Muslims were extremely short- Henry
and restricted in nature. His entire residence in north and Persia before his death in 1812, aged 31, occupied less than six years, the period of apprenticeship for most scholars before embarking on any serious translation original publication. For most of that short time the East India Company's requirements that its employees, including chaplains, should avoid public lived prevented him from seeking the kind of close contact with Indians that he had originally envisaged. However, I agree with Brian Stanley, that he was anyway temperamentally unsuited to press his case with Hindus and Muslims as vigorously as some contemporary and later missionaries would choose to do. Before examining legacy of his publishing and other preaching, I want to consider, first, the religious preconceptions and scholarly credentials he brought to religious debate with Muslims. Martyn shared the views of most of his generation about non-Christian activities systems. After a few months in India he contrasted, 'the holiness of the word of God...to the mock majesty of the Koran, and the trifling, indecent stuff of the Ramayuna'. [2]His own evangelical upbringing, followed by a conversion experience Cambridge, and a calling to evangelise India, precluded any consideration the bases of a Muslim's faith from 'other's' religious His private thoughts were sometimes harsh indeed: Mahommedanism he wrote off, when particularly exasperated, as the 'damnable delusion of the devil', and Muhammad a 'filthy debauchee'.[3]The reading he had done, mainly from seventeenth and eighteenth century writers, was, with important exception, entirely perspective. in respect to Islam. The exception, Martyn's main source of reference, once reached India, was George Sale's English translation of the Al-Koran of Mohammed, first published in 1734.[4]As his journal tells us, controversial read Sale's Qur'an during his first slow journey up the Ganges from Calcutta to Patna, and then again when preparing for discussion with learned Muslims Persia. As significant as the text itself, was the 'preliminary discourse' prefixed by Sale to his translation. This consists of a remarkable examination of the beliefs and practices Sale considered Muhammad had he erudite and soundly based, its author expressly intended to approve Islam 'such particulars seemed to me to deserve approbation', promulgated:
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the legacy of henry martyn to the study of india's muslims and islam ...

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