Translating the Bible in India
By “Awake!” correspondent in India
INDIA is a land of many languages. Census figures reveal a total of 1,652 mother tongues, spoken by a population of more than 600 million people. Getting the Bible into some of the more important languages of India has called for much perseverance and long-suffering. Interestingly, there is no other book in the world that has been so widely translated and that has so deeply affected the lives of so many persons.
Though Christendom had established herself in India as early as the fourth century C.E., the Bible did not appear in any Indian language until the 18th century. It is true that in 1665 Matthew’s Gospel was rendered into Tamil by a Dutch missionary on the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka). However, instead of being printed, this Tamil version was circulated handwritten on leaves of the palmyra palm tree. During the next 310 years, the whole Bible or portions of it gradually appeared in some 130 Indian languages.
Tamil and the ‘Golden Version’
The year 1706 was an important one for Bible translation in India. It was then that two Germans anxious to translate the Bible into Tamil landed at the Danish trading station at Tranquebar, in present-day Tamil Nadu. The Danish traders, including their chaplain, gave them a hostile reception.
But, in time, one of these Germans, Ziegenbalg by name, began to learn Tamil by sitting among children and tracing in the dust with them the characters of the Tamil alphabet. By the year 1714 this man produced, in Tamil, the Christian Greek Scriptures (commonly called the “New Testament”). At the time of his death in 1719, Ziegenbalg had completed the Hebrew Scriptures (“Old Testament”) up to the book of Ruth. The complete Bible in Tamil appeared in 1728.
Later came a revision of the Tamil Bible by another German, Philip Fabricius. It is said that he “crept through the original Bible text on his knees . . . carefully weighing each word to see how it might best be rendered.” Fabricius worked on his revision for 35 years, at a time when the British and French were struggling for supremacy in South India. Often the area was exposed to siege and plunder by marauding hordes, forcing Fabricius with his precious manuscripts to seek refuge at the Dutch settlement at Pulicat.
Despite such difficulties, the work of revision was successful. Fabricius’ version ranks as one of the most notable achievements in the whole field of Bible translation. It came to be known as the ‘Golden Version.’ All subsequent Tamil revisions were based on this work. Interestingly, the revision of 1936 rendered God’s personal name as Yehowah throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.
The Perseverance of William Carey
Illustrating the long-suffering needed to get the Bible into Indian languages is the experience of William Carey, a British shoemaker. To finance his Bible translation work, Carey worked as an indigo planter for the East India Company. Within 21 years Carey and his associates succeeded in translating the entire Bible or portions of it into 36 of the tongues spoken in India.
Those men faced tremendous obstacles. They encountered health hazards due to the lack of hygiene in a tropical climate. Also, their work was forbidden by the East India Company, which wrote: “Such a scheme [including the work of Bible translation] is pernicious, imprudent, useless, harmful, dangerous, profitless, fantastic.” But these translators persevered, appreciating the value of the Bible’s message in the lives of those who would read it.
To publish his translations, Carey set up a primitive wooden printing press at Calcutta in 1798. At first, local people referred to the press as the ‘god whom the English worship.’ During 1800 Carey transferred his printing establishment to the more hospitable Danish settlement at Serampore. The Christian Greek Scriptures in Chinese came off that press in 1805. Four years later an entire Bible in Bengali was issued. Then came a setback in 1812, when a fire at the Serampore press destroyed several painstakingly made, unpublished Bible translations.
But Carey quickly reorganized printing activities. The Scriptures in the Oriya language appeared in 1815, and in 1818 came Bibles in Sanskrit and Hindi. A year later the Marathi version was published. All together, more than 212,000 volumes were printed by Carey between 1801 and 1832. His partner, W. Ward, wrote home to England, saying: “I love England, I love you; . . . but to give to a man a New Testament, who never saw it . . . this is my blessed work. If it should be long on earth, it will bear a precious crop, sooner or later.”
Some Gave Their Lives
Bible translation in India took its toll of human lives too. This is evident from experiences of persons who labored on the Telugu translation, which took more than 120 years to complete. German scholar Benjamin Schultze evidently had finished a rendering into Telugu by 1732, but it was never printed. Apparently the manuscript was sent to Halle, Germany, and was mislaid or forgotten.
Later, another Telugu translation was destroyed in the Serampore fire of 1812. Then, one after another, four translators succumbed to fatal tropical diseases. The first complete Telugu Bible did not appear until 1854.
Malayalam, Tulu, Garo
When Bible translators arrived in territory where Malayalam was spoken, a priest of the local Syrian Church stated: “The Syrian Church is languishing for want of Scriptures.” However, with a crude printing press constructed from a description found in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the entire Bible in Malayalam was printed, and published in 1841. Noteworthy is the fact that God’s name, Jehovah, appears throughout the entire Hebrew Scripture portion of the Malayalam Bible, and rightly so.
After finishing this task, which required 24 years, Benjamin Bailey wrote: “If but one person be, by means of this translation, brought savingly to believe in Jesus Christ . . . I shall consider myself abundantly rewarded for all my labour and toil, and to God shall be all the glory.”
Since languages had to be reduced to writing before the Scriptures could be rendered into them, several communities in India have developed a written script because of the Bible. In almost every instance the first book to appear in such languages was the Word of God.
An example is the Bible in Tulu, a language spoken by more than one million people on the west coast of India. In order to render the Scriptures in Tulu, translators borrowed the script of the adjacent Kanarese-speaking people. The Tulu Bible appeared in 1847, only 16 years after the entire Bible was published in Kanarese (Kannada).
Interesting is the account of the translation into Garo, a tongue spoken in Assam. After developing a script for Garo, the translators began work on their version. The work was not done hastily; they appreciated the importance of accuracy. After completing the book of Genesis, they exclaimed: “It seems a very long way to the end of Malachi!” Often, not more than one verse was done in a day. In an effort to attain accuracy, the translators consulted every available version in English, French, German, Swedish and other languages of India, as well as the original Bible languages.
Concerning this Garo version, completed in 1924, one of the translators wrote: “The piles and piles and piles of [manuscripts], the stacks and stacks and stacks of proof accumulated make my flesh ache and my nerves tingle as I think of all the weariness they represent. But that side is soon forgotten in the joy of seeing the Garos with a complete Bible in their own language. What it means to them who read for the first time of God’s wonders, is not easily comprehended by us who have had it from infancy.”
Finding suitable renderings for Hebrew and Greek words was not without its peculiar difficulties. Workers on the Punjabi version in Gurmukhi script made several visits to local tradesmen to determine the right words for technical phrases. Carpenters were consulted for rendering words related to the Tabernacle, such as “tenons,” “socket pedestals,” and “panel frames.” (Ex. 26:19, AV, NW) To find terms for “the fat that covereth the inwards” and “the caul above the liver,” the translators had to visit butchers.—Lev. 3:3, 4, AV.
There were moments of humor too. For example, the translators decided to call “the innermost room,” or Most Holy (rendered “Oracle” in the King James Version), Akash Vani, meaning “heavenly voice.” (1 Ki. 6:5-31) However, the next day All India Radio announced that the official Hindi word for “radio” would henceforth be Akash Vani! So rather than be accused of blasphemy by installing a radio in King Solomon’s temple, a different word was chosen.
Time and space do not permit a full account of the tremendous work of getting the entire Bible into 34 major languages of India, as well as portions of it in many more. All in all, the Word of God can be read by some 525 million inhabitants of India in their mother tongues. These translations have greatly facilitated the preaching of the “good news” of God’s kingdom by Jehovah’s Witnesses in India. (Matt. 24:14) More than 4,750 individuals are now engaged in this Bible educational work, and an additional 3,174 individuals and families are using these Bible translations when the Witnesses call at their homes to study the Bible with them.
Bible translation has certainly benefited the inhabitants of India. The Bible’s message has given real meaning to life now and a dependable hope for the future to those who have put faith in it.