regard to that accommodation; he was then correcting Isaiah, and translating Jeremiah.

Oct. 30-New Testament, Pentateuch, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and part of Ezekiel, finished.

Nov. 23-Lamentations done, and more than half of Ezekiel; Mr. Fountain had begun a rough version of the Historical Books, from Joshua and onwards;-it was hoped the whole Bible would be finishedin another year. Oct. 13, 1799. Mr. Ward, the Missionary-printer, and three other Missionaries, arrived at Serampore.

Jan. 10, 1800. Mr. Carey fixed his residence at Serampore. May 18-Mr. Carey took an impression at the press of the first page of Matthew, just a fortnight after the establishment of the College of Fort William. Nearly the whole Bible was then translated.

Middle of June. Printing of the New Testament was begun, an edition of 2000 copies, with 500 extra copies of Matthew for immediate distribution.

Aug. 15-Matthew, Mark, and a great part of Luke printed off-they hoped to finish the New Testament by the next May;-near fifty copies had been subscribed for.

Oct. 15 Some hundreds of the separate copies of Matthew had been distributed; the whole Bible was translated.

November--Early in that month many natives came to the Mission house for copies of Matthew. On the 25th the first triumphs of the Gospel began in the family of Kristno, who was baptised on the 28th of December.

Feb. 14, 1801. All the types

were composed for the New Testament, and it was published in the following spring, about the time that Mr. Carey was appointed Teacher in the College. Mr. Thomas died the next October.

Nov. 23-First volume of the Old Testament, containing the Pentateuch, 1000 copies, nearly printed.

July 1802. First volume of the Old Testament published about the end of this month. An edition of a hundred copies of Psalms and Isaiah, (a class book for the College,) was next undertaken.

Jan. 1803. The 100 copies of Psalms and Isaiah finished towards the end of this month.

August-A new and improved edition of the New Testament, 1500 copies, had been begun. In the progress of this edition it

was determined to print 10,000 extra copies of Luke, Acts, and Romans.

Sept. 24, 1804. The edition of 10,000 had been begun, and the general Testament was far advanced.

Feb. 8, 1805. The 10,000 of Luke were nearly finished;the general Testament (Luke, Acts, and Romans being passed over,) was advanced to I Thessalonians, the third volume of the Old Testament, containing the books from Job to Canticles inclusive was printed to the 136th Psalm. This was the second edition of the Psalms, and besides 900 copies of the whole volume, 900 extra copies of that book were now printing.

Sept. 29-Third volume of the Old Testament finished;— not a copy of the first edition of the New Testament on hand;→

the second edition almost done, and it was published before the end of that year.

July 31, 1807. The fourth volume of the Old Testament, containing the Prophets, (1500 copies) printed to Joel. Before the end of the year it was finished, and the second volume, containing the Historical books, (from Joshua to Esther inclusive,) was printed to the 7th chapter of Judges. The 10,000 of Luke, Acts, and Romans were published the same year.

Jan. 1809. The remaining part of the manuscript had received its last correction.

Aug. The second volume of the Old Testament, 1500 copies, finished at the press, compicting the Bengalee Bible, after the labor of "sixteen years," twenty years after it was begun by Mr. Thomas. A third edition of the New Testament, (100 copjes, folio, to be used in public worship,) was in the press, and advanced to the middle of Acts.

1811. In the latter part of that year a second edition of the Pentateuch was in the press, and was printed to the middle of Leviticus. Probably a second edition of the whole Old Testament was intended, and may now be far advanced.

This translation was designed for the benefit of that portion of the inhabitants of Bengal who understand the Bengalee language, a population estimated by Mr. Johns to equal that of the United States, (seven millions,) and by the Missionaries at Serampore, to equal that of Great Britain, (eleven millions.) This language is not spoken by all the inhabitants of Bengal, but only by the Brahmins, coits, and

higher ranks of Hindoos. But all the Hindoos of the province who can read and write, of whatever cast, use it as the sole channel of epistolary intercourse, the only instrument of transacting busi. ness and keeping their accounts. Not one in five, according to Halhed, can read or write any other tongue, and it has therefore been called "the commercial Ben galee."

How great a proportion of the people of Bengal understand this language, it is difficult to determine: not one in a hundred, says Dr Carey, while taking his observations from Mudnabatty, in the northern part of the province; and yet he found his Bengalee version perfectly intelligible to all that were able to read. But Dr. Buchanan, who however may be supposed to have drawn his ideas from the neighborhood of Calcutta, tells us that almost all the people can read.

Dr Carey, while residing at Madnabatty, represented the lan. guage of the common people as differing as much from the true Bengalee as Lancashire from pure English, and as being a mixture of Bengalee, Hindos tanee, Fersian, Portuguese, Armenian, and English, consisting of a few words worked about to mean almost any thing, and differing in dialect every ten or twelve miles. The laboring peo ple, whose only care is to procure a little rice and cheat their merchant and zemindar, have sunk down into this ungrammati cal jargon, which it requires a year's labor for a native Bengalee scholar to learn. It was hoped by Dr. Carey, that the pub lication of the Bengalee version would make the common people

better acquainted with their own tongue; but that process being slow, he undertook to compile a "Dictionary of the vernacular dialect of Bengal," which was in the press at Serampore in Aug. 1811.

While Dr. Carey resided at Mudnabatty he stated also that the language of the common people through the country was the Hindostanec; and in his speech delivered at the public Disputation in the College of Fort William, in 1805, he spoke of the "colloquial Hindostanee," in distinction from the "cominersial Bengalee," and the "classic Persian." By the Hindostanee spoken by the common people he appears to mean this vernacular dialect, which he elsewhere calls a mixture of Hindostanee, Bengalee, Persian, Portuguese, Armenian, and English. Otherwise his accounts do not agree. And it is certain that the Hindostanee in some of its dialects, probably in all, is much corrupted by foreign mixtures.

The pure Bengalee is a language copious, beautiful, and expressive, and is easy of acquisition, especially since the grammars and vocabularies which have recently appeared: but it is difficult to read it with proper emphasis, as there is no pointing at all. It contains some words nearly resembling the Hebrew; but it is manifestly derived from the Shanscrit, to which it is intimately related in expression, construction, and character. In many cases it is impossible to know how to spell Bengalce words without a knowledge of the Shanscrit. That proper pames are so variously spelled in different parts of the province

is said to be owing to a difference of dialects.* V. PERSIAN. Four distinct versions of this important language have been undertaken.

The first was begun as early as September 1798 by the late Col. Colebrooke, Surveyor-General in Bengal, at that time a Captain in the army, at Calcutta He afterwards carried on the work under the patronage of the College of Fort William. Before the month of March 1805 the Gospels were finished, a part or the whole of which has been printed at the College press, and deposited in the Bibliotheca Biblica of Calcutta.

The second version was undertaken by the Baptist Missionaries, about the month of September, 1804; and before the middle of September 1806 the book of Psalms was translated. By the end of July 1807 Sabat had joined them, and they had begun to print. But in the month of October Sabat was removed to Dinapore, and this version was abandoned, after being carried on "to a pretty large extent."

The third version was begun in October, 1807 by Sabat, who soon after was joined by Mirzą, both under the superintendance of Mr. Martyn

Matthew was

printed before November 1809, and Luke before May 1810, at which time 800 copies of each had been deposited in the Bibliotheca. By October 1811, the version of the New Testament

B. P. A. vol. i, p. 79 note, 92, 93, 121, 128, 149, 171, 178, 182, 183, 204, 216, 217, 222, 223 320, 368, 446, 447. Vol. ii, p. 64. Mem. p. 69. Ch. Ob. vol. xi, p. 242. Nar. p. 39. Pan, vol vii, p. 277. R's. Cyc. under Bengal, language of

was finished. At what place Matthew and Luke were printed does not appear; but no part of the version was in the press at Serampore so late as Jan. 15, 1812. The Bible Society, at the time of making their last Report had not heard of its being in the press. The Old Testament was about to be translated.

The fourth version was undertaken by the Rev. L. Sabas. tiani, an Italian priest of the Romish church, many years a resident at the court of Persia, aud a man of great learning. This version is designed for the Christians dispersed over Persia, who are represented as being very desirous of possessing the Scriptures in a plain translation. When the Bible Society made their eighth Report, in May of the present year, they had not heard that Mr. Sabastiani had proceeded further than nearly to the end of the Epistles. But Dr. Carey spoke of the version as complete in October 1811.

At

that time it was printing at Serampore, at the expense of the Corresponding Committee of the Bible Society. It was still in the press in January of the present year.

The modern Persic is accounted by some to be "indisputably a derivative of Shanscrit, through the medium of the ancient Zend;" but Dr. Buchanan, after an intimate acquaintance with Sabat and Mirza confidently pronounsed it to be an offspring of the Arabic. Five years before, he had numbered it among the "primary" languages of Asia.

This language, which was introduced into India by the Mogul conquerors, and is understood there by "multitudes of the high

er classes," is reputed "the French of the East." "It is spoken;" says Dr. Buchanan, "at all the Mussulman Courts in India, and is the usual language of judicial proceedings under the British government It is also "the general language of Western Asia, particularly among the higher classes," "being generally understood from Calcuttato Damascus." "Spoken over nearly one quarter of the globe," and being "the proper tongue of a great kingdom," in which "there are at a low computation two hundred thousand Christians," besides multitudes of Jews, it stands next in importance to the Chinese and Arabic.*

VI. HINDOSTANEE. The book of Psalms in this language was formerly published at Tranquebar by the Danish Missionaries; which probably was the volume of Scripture in the library of the Elector of Wurtemburg in 1804. In the present age three Hindostanee translations have been commenced.

The first was begun before the end of 1802, by William Hunter, Esq. of the College of Fort William, and by the month of March 1805, the four Gospels were translated, and a part of them printed at the College press. They were in the press in September 1804, and by February 1805, Matthew and a part of Mark were struck off. How much has since been printed we are not told, not however the whole of the Gospels. As Dr. Hunter is still living, and is the