CAREY AND SRIRAMPUR MISSION 115 lexicographical, are called out to indicate (1) new and foreign and (2) noble ideas.' Hence, it is argued, the importance of the translated Bible in Bengali li- terature. The remark, however, would have. been per- fectly true and appropriate had the condition of things been in India what it had always been in Egrope. The Bible is the one book in the European countries which is a universal favourite, and its ides: and lan- guage have through many centuries become almost a part of the ideas and language of the people at large. To this is partly due the enormous influence of the sacrel book on the languages and literatures of Europe. The Bengali Bible, however, has failed to exercise any such influence. In India, where the missionaries can boast of very few triumphs amony the educated class and the Bible is not so familiarly known and univer- sally respected, the case is not the same as it is in Europe. Again, it is true that in all translations the resources of the language are drawn out to the utmost and that translation is the best exercising ground for an infant literature, yet even asa piece of translation, the Bengali Bible cannot in any sense be regarded as a triumph of the translator’s art, and the very strain in expressing strange and alien ideas with a limited command over the inherent powers of the language, makes the style crabbed, stilted, and unnatural. The missionary writings in Bengali have a sort of traditional repute for crabbed syntax and false juxtaposition of words ; here surely the tradition for once is not mis- leading. Indeed, in spite of all that can be said in favour of the versions, no critic, however alive to their importance
- Cal. Rev. vol. xiii. 1850. Art, “Early Bengali Literature and
Newspaper.” p. 139.
