ning to listen to them, for they will catch up every idiom in a
little time. My children can speak nearly as well as the natives, and
know many things in Bengali which they do not know in English. I
should also recommend to your consideration a very large country,
perhaps unthought of: I mean Bhootan or Tibet. Were two missionaries
sent to that country, we should have it in our power to afford them
much help...The day I received your letter I set about composing a
grammar and dictionary of the Bengal language to send to you. The best
account of Hindu mythology extant, and which is pretty exact, is
Sonnerat's Voyage, undertaken by order of the king of France."

Without Sanskrit Carey found that he could neither master its Bengali
offshoot nor enrich that vernacular with the words and combinations
necessary for his translations of Scripture. Accordingly, with his
usual rapidity and industry, we find that he had by April 1796 so
worked his way through the intricate difficulties of the mother
language of the Aryans that he could thus write to Ryland, with more
than a mere scholar's enthusiasm, of one of the two great Vedic
epics:--"I have read a considerable part of the Mahabarata, an epic
poem written in most beautiful language, and much upon a par with
Homer; and it was, like his Iliad, only considered as a great effort of
human genius, I should think it one of the first productions in the
world; but alas! it is the ground of faith to millions of the simple
sons of men, and as such must be held in the utmost abhorrence." At
the beginning of 1798 he wrote to Sutcliff:--"I am learning the
Sanskrit language, which, with only the helps to be procured here, is
perhaps the hardest language in the world. To accomplish this, I have
nearly translated the Sanskrit grammar and dictionary into English, and
have made considerable progress in compiling a dictionary, Sanskrit,
including Bengali and English."

By this year he had completed his first translation of the Bible except
the historical books from Joshua to Job, and had gone to Calcutta to
obtain estimates for printing the New Testament, of which he had
reported to Mr. Fuller:--"It has undergone one correction, but must
undergo several more. I employ a pundit merely for this purpose, with
whom I go through the whole in as exact a manner as I can. He judges
of the style and syntax, and I of the faithfulness of the translation.
I have, however, translated several chapters