em; namely, the
Sanskrit, the Bengali, and the Mahratta. To these I have resolved to
add grammars of the Telinga, Kurnata, Orissa, Punjabi, Kashmeeri,
Goojarati, Nepalese, and Assam languages. Two of these are now in the
press, and I hope to have two or three more of them out by the end of
the next year.

"This may not only be useful in the way I have stated, but may serve to
furnish an answer to a question which has been more than once repeated,
'How can these men translate into so great a number of languages?' Few
people know what may be done till they try, and persevere in what they
undertake.

"I am now printing a dictionary of the Bengali, which will be pretty
large, for I have got to page 256, quarto, and am not near through the
first letter. That letter, however, begins more words than any two
others.

"To secure the gradual perfection of the translations, I have also in
my mind, and indeed have been long collecting materials for, An
Universal Dictionary of the Oriental languages derived from the
Sanskrit. I mean to take the Sanskrit, of course, as the groundwork,
and to give the different acceptations of every word, with examples of
their application, in the manner of Johnson, and then to give the
synonyms in the different languages derived from the Sanskrit, with the
Hebrew and Greek terms answering thereto; always putting the word
derived from the Sanskrit term first, and then those derived from other
sources. I intend always to give the etymology of the Sanskrit term,
so that that of the terms deduced from it in the cognate languages will
be evident. This work will be great, and it is doubtful whether I
shall live to complete it; but I mean to begin to arrange the
materials, which I have been some years collecting for this purpose, as
soon as my Bengali dictionary is finished. Should I live to accomplish
this, and the translations in hand, I think I can then say, 'Lord, now
lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'"

The ardent scholar had twenty-three years of toil before him in this
happy work. But he did not know this, while each year the labour
increased, and the apprehension grew that he and his colleagues might
at any time be removed without leaving a trained successor. They
naturally looked first to the sons of the mission for translators as
they had already done for preachers.

To Dr. Carey personally, however, the education of a young missionary
specially fitted to be his successor,