William Carey
F. Deaville WalkerMoody Press Edition, 1980 ISBN: 0-8024-9562-1
This book is..., but a pen-portrait
of Carey himself; even his greatest colleagues, Marshman and Ward,
are treated as....7
...in England in 1809 Southey,
defending the Serampore Triad, wrote1:--These low-born and low-bred mechanics have translated the
whole Bible into Bengali, and have by this time printed it. They
are printing the New Testament in the Sanskrit, the Orissa,
Mahratta, Hindustan, and Guzarat, and are translating it into
Persic, Telinga, Karnata, Chinese, the language of the Sikhs and of
the Burmans; and in four of these languages they are going on
with the Bible. ....
219
221
"Carey wrote:
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. ....
We can have types of all the different characters
cast here. . . . The languages are the Hindustani (Hindi),1
Maharastia, 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."
222
on
..., 1804, the B. and F. B. S. was formed.
..., its secretaries wrote to
Calcutta to ask George Udney to take steps to form an auxiliary
in Bengal and proposing that he, with David Brown, Claudius
Buchanan, and the Serampore Triad, should be the local committee.Book by book, portions of the
New and Old Testaments were rendered into Sanskrit, Orissa,
Maharati, Hindustani, and Gujarati, and sent to the press. Carey
was the master-translator and what we should today call "the General
Editor"; he was ably seconded by Marshman who, in 1811, received
from Brown University the degree of Doctor of Divinty as
Carey had done four years earlier.
223
".... In December, 1811 we find
him writing to Dr. Ryland (with whom, as a man of considerable
scholarship, Carey always corresponded on such matters):"
224
"The necessity which lies upon me of acquiring so many lan-
guages obliges me to study and write out the grammar of each
of them, and to attend closely to all their irregularities and pecu-
liarities. I have therefore published grammars for three of them,
the Sanskrit, the Bengali, and the Mahratta. I also intend to pub-
lish grammars of the others, and have now in the press a grammar
of the Telinga language, and another of that of the Sikhs, and
have begun one of the Orissa language. To these I intend in time
to add those of the Kurnata, the Kashmeera, and Nepala, and
perhaps the Assam languages. I am now printing a dictionary of
the Bengali, which will be pretty large, for I have got to....""Fifteen months later we find him writing--this time to Fuller:
I was never so closely employed as at present. I have just fin-
ished for the press my Telinga grammar; the last sheet of the
Panjabi grammar is in the press. I am getting forward with my
Kurnata grammar; indeed it is nearly ready for press. I am also
preparing materials for grammars of the Kashmeer, Pushto, and
Billochi languages, and have begun digesting those for the Orissa.
The care of publishing and correcting Felix's Burman grammar
is on me, beside learning all these languages, correcting the trans-
lations in them, writing the Bengali dictionary, and all my per-
sonal and collegiate duties. I can...."
227
"Brown and
Buchanan had urged Martyn to undertake translation work in
Hindustani, Persian, and Arabic; the Serampore Triad felt hurt
and slighted at being overlooked and the work given to a young
man fresh in India. ...."
228
"Steadily the work went on, and the list of translations grew
longer. In 1808 Carey was able to report that some part at least
of Scripture had been translated into the following languages:
Sanskrit, Bengali, Mahratta, Orissa, Hindustani, Gujarati, Chinese,
Sikh, Telinga, Kurnata, Burman, and Persian."
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