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GUARANI, AND BRAZILIAN.
"THE Guarani language is
vernacular to the most widely spread and the most numerous people of South
America. At the period of the discovery of that continent, tribes of
the Guarani race occupied the
whole extent of territory which subsequently fell under the dominion of the
Portuguese. The number
of the Guarani has not been accurately ascertained: they are still found in
Brazil, and in
Paraguay,
and are in a state of semi-barbarism. A great improvement was supposed
to have been wrought
in their mental and physical condition by the
Jesuits, who laboured among them in Paraguay;
but on the suppression of that order, and the consequent withdrawal of the Jesuits from America in
1768, the Guarani returned to the habits of savage life. Some years
ago Mr. Armstrong, of Buenos
Ayres, entered into a communication with the British and Foreign Bible
Society respecting a trans-
lation of the Scriptures into Guarani, which he stated he had then the
prospect of obtaining. The
negotiation does not, however, appear to have terminated satisfactorily, as
the Guarani have not yet
obtained an edition of any part of the Scriptures in their vernacular
language.
A version of the entire Bible in the eastern
dialect of the Guarani was, however, executed by an
English minister, who accompanied the
Dutch to Recife, when they took it from
the Portuguese, in
the early half of the seventeenth century. But this version was
of little use to the people for whom
it was designed, for it was never committed to the press, and it is not now
supposed to be extant.
It is popularly known as the Brazilian version, because
written in the dialect spoken in the Brazils by
the Tupi, a race nearly allied to, if not
identical with, the Guarani."--The Bible of Every Land. (1860,
Second Edition) Samuel Bagster [Info only]
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