The Life
of
William Carey, D.D.
Shoemaker and Missionary
PROFESSOR OF SANSKRIT, BENGALI, AND MARATHI IN THE
COLLEGE OF FORT WILLIAM, CALCUTTA
by George Smith, ll.d. c.i.E.
FELLOW OF THE ROYAL GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL SOCIETIES; MEMBER OF
COUNCIL OF THE SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY; AUTHOR OF THE
'LIFE OF DUFF' AND 'LIFE OF WILSON,' ETC.
Pur hlqon balein eiV thn ghn.
WITH PORTRAIT AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1885
The right of translation is reserved.
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, Edinburgh.
to
my wife
for twenty years my fellow-worker in
calcutta and serampore
in the scenes consecrated by the memory of
william carey
PREFACE.
ON the death of William Carey In 1834 Dr. Joshua Marshman promised to write the Life of his great colleague, with whom he had held almost daily converse since the beginning of the century, but he survived too short a time to begin the work. As a writer of culture, in full sympathy and frequent correspondence with Carey, the Rev. Christopher Anderson, of Edinburgh, was even better fitted for the task. in 1836 the Rev. Eustace Carey anticipated him by issuing what is little better than a selection of mutilated letters and journals made at the request of the Committee of the Baptist Missionary Society. It contains one passage of value, however. Dr. Carey once said to his nephew, whose design he seems to have suspected, "Eustace, if after my removal any one should think it worth his while to write my Life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he give me credit for being a plodder he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything."
The Rev. Dr. Belcher was the first to publish, at Philadelphia, U.S., in 1853, a brief biography showing the man as he was. In 1859 Mr. John Marshman, after his final return to England, published The Life and Times of Carey,
viii
PREFACE.
Marshman, and Ward, a valuable history and defence of the Serampore Mission, but rather a biography of his father than of Carey. In 1881 the Rev. Dr. Culross wrote a short and charming sketch of William Carey. Mr. John Taylor, Northampton, has lately published a collection of facts and extracts relating to the Carey, in his Bibliotheca Northantonensis.
When I first went to Serampore the great missionary had not been twenty years dead. During my long residence there as Editor of The Friend of India, I came to know, in most of its details, the nature of the work done by Carey for India and for Christendom in the first third of the century. I began to collect such materials for his Biography as were to be found in the office, the press, and the college, and among the Native Christians and Brahman pundits whom he had influenced. In addition to such materials and experience I have been favoured with the use of many unpublished letters written by Carey or referring to him; for which courtesy I here desire to thank his grandsons, Frederick George Carey, Esq., LL.B., of Lincoln's Inn; and the Rev. Jonathan T. Carey of Tiverton, whose son is now carrying on the Burrisal Mission founded by his great-grandfather; also the Rev. C. B. Lewis, the biographer of Thomas, the first medical missionary; and the venerable widow of the Rev. Christopher Anderson. Mr. Baynes, the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society—which is worthily conducting in Africa on the Congo, an enterprise greater than even Carey prayed for—has generously granted me the use of several engravings from photographs, which he had taken during a recent visit to Serampore. Mr. R. Blechynden junr., of Calcutta, caused the records of the Asiatic and Agricultural Societies there to be searched and copies for use in these pages.
ix
PREFACE.
My three Biographies of Carey of Serampore, Duff of Calcutta, and Wilson of Bombay, cover a period of nearly a century and a quarter, from 1761 to 1878. They have been written as contributions to that history of the Church of India which one of its native sons must some day attempt; but also to the annals of the Evangelical Revival, which may well be called the Second Reformation; and to the history of English-speaking peoples, whom the Foreign Missions begun by Carey have made the rulers and civilisers of the non-Christian world.
The Life of the Rev. Krishna Mohun Banerjea, D.L., C.I.E., Dr. Duff's second convert, and from his baptism in 1832 to his death in 1885 the leader of the Native Christians of India, is being prepared by one of his grandsons. To complete the story so far as India is concerned, we still desiderate such a record of progress in South India from Ziegenbalg and Schwartz to Anderson and Miller as Bishop Caldwell could give us; and a biography of Charles Grant, for which, I believe, there are abundant materials.
SERAMPORE HOUSE, MERCHISTON;
EDINBURGH, 24th August 1885.
CHAPTER I. |
PAGE 1 |
CHAPTER II. |
27 |
CHAPTER III. |
55 |
CHAPTER IV. |
79 |
CHAPTER V. |
111 |
CHAPTER VI. |
132 |
CHAPTER VII. |
157 |
xii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII. |
PAGE 178 |
CHAPTER IX. |
207 |
CHAPTER X. |
235 |
CHAPTER XI. |
272 |
CHAPTER XII. WHAT CAREY DID FOR SCIENCE—FOUNDER OF THE AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY OF INDIA |
294 |
CHAPTER XIII. |
330 |
CHAPTER XIV. |
377 |
CHAPTER XV. |
411 |
xiii
CONTENTS.
PAGE 441 |
|
II. LATEST JUSTIFICATION OF CAREY'S PIONEER WORK | 451 |
III. THE ANGLO-ORIENTAL AND THE ANGLO-VERNACULAR |
452 |
INDEX | 457 |
___________
ILLUSTRATIONS.
WILLIAM CAREY AT FIFTY |
Frontispiece. |
|
PAGE 4 |
CAREY'S "COLLEGE," HACKLETON | 22 |
CAREY'S COTTAGE AND SCHOOL, PIDDINGTON | 24 |
BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLAND'S FOREIGN MISSIONS, KETTERING | 53 |
FIRST MISSION HOUSE IN NORTH INDIA, DINAJPOOR | 99 |
DANISH LUTHERAN (NOW ANGLICAN) CHURCH, SERAMPORE | 123 |
PLAN OF SERAMPORE ON THE HOOGLI | 125 |
THE FIRST BRAHMAN WHO PREACHED CHRIST | 140 |
CAREY'S CHRISTIAN VILLAGE—BAPTISM IN THE TANK | 141 |
CHRISTIAN VILLAGERS, SERAMPORE | 145 |
KRISHNA CHANDRA PAL, THE FIRST CONVERT | 160 |
HENRY MARTYN'S PAGODA, ALDEEN | 191 |
SHEEV TEMPLE, SERAMPORE | 196 |
THE SERAMPORE COLLEGE | 384 |
NATIVE DIVINITY STUDENTS, SERAMPORE COLLEGE | 397 |
CAREY'S OFFICIAL RESIDENCE AND BACK OF THE COLLEGE | 420 |
CAREY'S TOMB, SERAMPORE | 433 |
"As time passes it appears that we are in the hands of a Providence which is greater than all statesmanship, that this fabric so blindly piled up has a chance of becoming a part of the permanent edifice of civilisation, and that the Indian achievement of England, as it is the strongest, may after all turn out to be the greatest of all her achievements."—PROFESSOR J. R. SEELEY.
Created: November 24, 2003 Updated: February 2, 2009