revelation, from its identification with false physics, just as Duff
was to see and use it afterwards with tremendous effect, and
wrote:--"There is a necessity of explaining to them several
circumstances relative to geography and chronology, as they have many
superstitious opinions on those subjects which are closely connected
with their systems of idolatry." The Bengali Bible was the result of
fifteen years' sweet toil, in which Marshman read the Greek and Carey
the Bengali; every one of their colleagues examined the proof sheets,
and Carey finally wrote with his own pen the whole of the five octavo
volumes. In the forty years of his missionary career Carey prepared
and saw through the press five editions of the Old Testament and eight
editions of the New in Bengali.

The Sanskrit version was translated from the original, and written out
by the toiling scholar himself. Sir William Jones is said to have been
able to secure his first pundit's help only by paying him Rs. 500 a
month, or L700 a year. Carey engaged and trained his many pundits at a
twentieth of that sum. He well knew that the Brahmans would scorn a
book in the language of the common people. "What," said one who was
offered the Hindi version, "even if the books should contain divine
knowledge, they are nothing to us. The knowledge of God contained in
them is to us as milk in a vessel of dog's skin, utterly polluted."
But, writes the annalist of Biblical Translations in India, Carey's
Sanskrit version was cordially received by the Brahmans. Destroyed in
the fire in 1812, the Old Testament historical books were again
translated, and appeared in 1815. In 1827 the aged saint had strength
to bring out the first volume of a thorough revision, and to leave the
manuscript of the second volume, on his death, as a legacy to his
successors, Yates and Wenger. Against Vedas and Upanishads, Brahmanas
and Epics, he set the Sanskrit Bible.

The whole number of completely translated and published versions of the
sacred Scriptures which Carey sent forth was twenty-eight. Of these
seven included the whole Bible, and twenty-one contained the books of
the New Testament. Each translation has a history, a spiritual romance
of its own. Each became almost immediately a silent but effectual
missionary to the peoples of Asia, as well as the scholarly and
literary pioneer of those later editions and versions from which the
native churches of farther Asia derive the materia