Page:History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century.djvu/135

 CAREY AND SRIRAMPUR MISSION 111 is not the same as that which Carey’s or Yates’ translations can ever aspire to attain'. There might be some point in comparing Carey’s version to Wyclif’s, for the latter cannot, it is well-known, compete as literature with that produced two centuries later in English and conse- quently possesses nothing save an historical attrection. But Coverdale’s claim rests on his supposed principal share in the merits of the early Tudor translations of the Bible. To compare these early English versions of the Bible with the Bengali ones of Carey and Yates would be to make a wrong estimate of both. As a piece of literature the Bengali version cannot be said to be a masterpiece in the sense in which the English versions are. That the English version, whether of 1535 or of 1611, is a monument of early English prose ; that its peculiar style—“ the swan- song” as happily put “of Middle English transferred from verse to prose”—has always been the admiration of best critics and writers from generation to generation ; and that there is no better English anywhere than the English of the Bible ; of these facts there can be no doubt. But to speak of Carey’s and Yates’ versions in similar terms would not only be incorrect but ludicrous. Here is the version of one of the most sublime passages of the Bible— the account of the creation at the beginning ; but the reader will note that the translation is not only imperfect and crude, the grammar incorrect, the idiom faulty, the syntax crabbed and obscure, but also the whole thing looks like an absolutely foreign growth vainly attempted to be acclimated in Bengali. প্রথমে ঈশ্বর স্যজ্জন করিলেন স্বর্গ ও পৃথিবী। পৃথিবী শূন্য ও অস্থিরবাকার হইল এবং গভীরের উপরে অন্ধকার ও ঈশ্বরের আত্মা ' Or even Wenger's (1861) or Rouse’s (1897) later revisions.