arey had encouraged the publication at his
own press of translations of both the Mahabharata and the Ramayana into
Bengali. Carey's Ramayana excited a keen interest not only among the
learned of Europe, but among poetical students. Southey eagerly turned
to it for materials for his Curse of Kehama, in the notes to which he
makes long quotations from "the excellent and learned Baptist
missionaries of Serampore." Dean Milman, when professor of poetry in
Oxford, drew from the same storehouse many of the notes with which he
enriched his verse translations from both epics. A. W. von Schlegel,
the death of whose eldest brother at Madras early led him to Oriental
studies, published two books with a Latin translation. Mr. Ralph T. H.
Griffith most pleasantly opened the treasures of this epic to English
readers in his verse translations published since 1868. Carey's
translation has always been the more rare that the edition despatched
for sale in England was lost at sea, and only a few presentation copies
are extant, one of which is in the British Museum.

Carey's contributions to Sanskrit scholarship were not confined to what
he published or to what appeared under his own name. We are told by H.
H. Wilson that he had prepared for the press translations of treatises
on the metaphysical system called Sankhya. "It was not in Dr. Carey's
nature to volunteer a display of his erudition, and the literary
labours already adverted to arose in a great measure out of his
connection with the college of Calcutta, or were suggested to him by
those whose authority he respected, and to whose wishes he thought it
incumbent upon him to attend. It may be added that Dr. Carey spoke
Sanskrit with fluency and correctness."

He edited for the college the Sanskrit text of the Hitopadesa, from six
MSS. recensions of this the first revelation to Europe of the fountain
of Aryan folk-tales, of the original of Pilpay's Fables.[15] H. H.
Wilson remarks that the errors are not more than might have been
expected from the variations and defects of the manuscripts and the
novelty of the task, for this was the first Sanskrit book ever printed
in the Devanagari character. To this famous work Carey added an
abridgment of the prose Adventures of Ten Princes (the Dasa Kumara
Carita), and of Bhartri-hari's Apophthegms. Colebrooke records his
debt to Carey for carrying through the Serampore press the Sanskrit
dictionary of Amara Sinha, the oldest native lexi