The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
India was being prepared for the new missionary policy. On what we may
call its literary side Carey had been long busy. On its more strictly
educational side, the charter of 1813 had conceded what had been
demanded in vain by a too feeble public opinion in the charter of 1793.
A clause was inserted at the last moment declaring that a sum of not
less than a lakh of rupees (or ten thousand pounds) a year was to be
set apart from the surplus revenues, and applied to the revival and
improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives
of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the
sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories there. The
clause was prompted by an Anglo-Indian of oriental tastes, who hoped
that the Brahman and his Veda might thus be made too strong for the
Christian missionary and the Bible as at last tolerated under the 13th
resolution. For this reason, and because the money was to be paid only
out of any surplus, the directors and their friends offered no
opposition. For the quarter of a century the grant was given, and was
applied in the spirit of its proposer. But the scandals of its
application became such that it was made legally by Bentinck and
Macaulay, and practically by Duff, the fountain of a river of knowledge
and life which is flooding the East.
The first result of the liberalism of the charter of 1813 and the
generous views of Lord Hastings was the establishment in Calcutta by
the Hindoos themselves, under the influence of English secularists, of
the Hindoo, now the Presidency College. Carey and Marshman were not in
Calcutta, otherwise they must have realised even then what they left to
Duff to act on fourteen years after, the importance of English not only
as an educating but as a Christianising instrument. But though not so
well adapted to the immediate need of the reformation which they had
begun, and though not applied to the very heart of Bengal in Calcutta,
the prospectus of their "College for the Instruction of Asiatic,
Christian, and Other Youth in Eastern Literature and European Science,"
which they published on the 15th July 1818, sketched a more perfect and
complete system than any since attempted, if we except John Wilson's
almost unsupported effort in Bombay. It embraced the classical or
learned languages of the Hindoos and Mohammedans, Sanskrit and Arabic;
the English language and literature, to enable the senior students "to
dive into the deepest recesses of European science, and enrich their
own language with its choicest treasures"; the preparation of manuals
of science, philosophy, and history in the learned and vernacular
languages of the East; a normal department to train native teachers and
professors; as the crown of all, a theological institute to equip the
Eurasian and native Christian students, by a quite unsectarian course
of study, in apologetics, exegetics, and the Bible languages, to be
missionaries to the Brahmanical classes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary — John Shaqi
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