Miao: Hwa Bible History (1)

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**List: Miao Ministry the Bible ( the Bible ) **File: Miao: Chuan Bible History **File: Miao: He Bible History Miao: Hwa... "The Hwa, or Flowered, Miao live in western Kweichow Province of China and southward as far as northern Vietnam and Laos.   An impoverished people, widely scattered across the mountains and arid upland plateaux of southwestern China, the story of the movement of these hill folk to Christianity is one of the most remarkable in the history of missions. Samuel Pollard and his fellow mies. began their work among the Miao at the end of the 19th century.   They first attempted to provide the illiterate Miao peasants with the Gospel by teaching them to read the Chinese Bible.   Despite the almost insuperable difficulties posed by this program, such was the eagerness of the Miao to read the Scriptures that, we are told: ‘Within six months there were 10,000 people in and around one mission station alone - not to speak of the others - all studying the Gospel, and yet there was no portion of the Word of God in their own language’. The mission set itself to provide the Miao with a Bible in their own tongue.   As Mesrop had done for the Armenians, and Cyril for the Slavs, Pollard and his colleagues devised a script for the Miao. It was a syllabary, an alphabet of syllables, such as Evans had invented earlier for the Cree Indians of Canada, and its success was immediate and phenomenal.   When the first copies of one of the Miao Gospels reached Yunnan-fu, the provincial capital, every copy was sold within two hours, although the consign- ment had been carried in on the backs of twenty-nine horses. Twice the entire font of Miao-script type was destroyed (in the Yokohama earthquake and in the Japanese Shanghai Campaign of 1932), and twice it was remade so that the Bible might be read in this strange writing."--1000 Tongues, 1972   [Info only]    "Reduced to written form by S. Pollard, of the Bible Christian Mission about 1904.    First publication, Selections from the Gospels, with the Decalogue, the Lord’s Prayer and a few hymns, in 1905 at Chengu; tr. by Mr. Pollard. St. Mark’s Gospel, BFBS, Chaotung, 1907; St. John’s Gospel, Shanghai, 1908.   New Testament, 1917.   Revised, 1936, by Rev. W. H. Hudspeth and Rev. A. G. Nichols, of the United Methodist Mission.    Adam version: Epistles of St. John, Taichow, 1910; St. Matthew’s Gospel, Romans, Galatians, 1911; tr. by James R. Adam of the CIM: all printed in Roman character.   CP: BFBS."--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only] MIAO: Hwa dialect--1000 Tongues, 1939   [Info only: Pollard script   "1936" Book ch: v unknown.] Pollard Script "1907 Mark   1908 John 1917 Acts   New Testament (reprinted 1929) 1936 New Testament (revised)   BFBS, Shanghai Translated by Samuel Pollard, Bible Christian Mission, and revised by W. H. Hudspeth and A. G. Nicholls, United Methodist Mission."-- 1000 Tongues, 1972   [Info only: POLLARD SYLLABIC SCRIPT   "1936" Mark 1:2 unknown.]

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