Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/131

 CAREY AND SRIRAMPUR MISSION 107 One of the earliest works that the Mission accomplished was the printing of the New Testa- ৮০৪ সি ment in Bengali on Feb. 7, 1801 after a labour of nine months! and of the Old Testament between 1502 and 1809, Carey, while at Madnabati, had completed the translation of the greater portion of the Bible by the year 1798 with the exception of the historical books from Joshua to Job.? He had gone to Calcutta to obtain the estimates of printing but had found it beyond his slender means : for the cost of printing 10,000 copies was estimated at nearly Rs. 43,750.% To have got it printed History of its printing. in England was well-nigh impractic- able, for he had found that each Williams, with an introductory memoir by Thos. Wright; also see Marshman, History of Serampore Mission. But see Bengal Obituary, pp. 338, ? He had begun the translation as soon as he could fairly learn the language. We find him writing to Sutcliffe only a year after his arrival (Aug. 9, 1794): “The language (of Bengali) is copious and I think beautiful. I begin to converse in it a little............... I intend to send yon a copy of Genesis, Matthew, Mark and James in Bengali; with a small vocabulary ‘and ‘grammar of the lunguage, in manuscripts, of my own composition” (E. Carey, op. cif. p. 195). On July 17, 1796, he writes to Fuller that “almost all the Pentateuch and the New Testament are now completed” (ibid p. 265). By 1799, almost the whole of the Bible was translated. It is customary to attribute the authorship of the entire Bengali Bible to Carey, but from the report of the work given by him (ibid p. 345, Letter to Fuller, dated July 17, 1799) we find that in the first version, Fountain (d. Ang. 1800) and Thomas helped him much. Fountain translated 1 and 2 Kings, Joshna, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samnel and 2 Chronicles : while Thomas undertook Matthew, Mark (ii-x), Luke, and James. All the rest was Carey’s own as well as the whole correction. The correction, however, sometimes rendered the original version into quite a new work, especially in the case of Thomas’s translation which was very incor- rect and imperfect (ibid p 323; Periodical Accounts, vol. i, pp. 20-21.) 3 E. Carey, op. cit. p. 277 and also p. 368 ; see also p. 239.
 * Preface to the Serampore Letters (1800-1816) ed. by L. and M.